The Joy of Tech comic today is simply brilliant. A nice comic modeled after the “Night before Christmas”. Someone is simply a genius for coming up with something so creative!

Joy of Tech

After making the switch to Mac a couple years back, I was a little confused about file sharing options. In Windows you could right-click a folder and share it and you were done. On a Mac, you went into System Preferences and enabled it….but then you had to login and all kinds of scary messes to access the data. With Leopard, you can share just a folder again, with per-user limited access and more. Very exciting.

More details here.

So I pre-ordered my copy of Leopard from the Apple Store even though I ended up having this Friday off and will be going to a local store to hopefully grab a free Leopard t-shirt. But just wanted to say that I received a shipment notification email this morning for overnight delivery, so it really should be delivered on the 26th. That pretty awesome!

iPhone Alley is reporting that a new version of iFuntastic will automate the jailbreak process. Has anyone used this application to confirm this? I’m still just using 1.0.2 with AppTapp installed and haven’t had any issues. However, if I can now upgrade to 1.1.1 and still put ringtones and have AppTapp on my phone, I’d love to do that.

Eternal Storms Software announces GimmeSomeTune 4.0, their free, lyrics and cover artwork companion to iTunes. GimmeSomeTune is an iTunes companion with a large user base. Its core features are fetching cover artwork and lyrics for the currently playing song in iTunes, a info-window that shows info on the song, a lyrics window, hotkeys to control iTunes from any application, last.fm support and Remote Control support.

GimmeSomeTune is highly customizable. Nearly every aspect of it can be changed and adjusted to the user’s personal needs. It is Freeware, but donations are greatly appreciated and used for further development of the application. GimmeSomeTune requires Mac OS X 10.4 “Tiger”, an older version for Mac OS X 10.3.9 is still available on the website.

Website
Product URL
Direct Download Link
Direct Download Link for OS X 10.3.9
Screenshots of GimmeSomeTune
Logos of Eternal Storms Software

Seattle, Washington - October 22, 2007 - BusyMac is proud to announce BusySync 1.0, their multi-user calendar sharing utility for iCal. Designed for families and small workgroups, BusySync allows multiple users to easily and cost-effectively share calendars on a local area network without the need for a dedicated server. Shared calendars can be viewed and edited by multiple users and changes are instantly published and synchronized with all users on the network.

BusySync is a Mac OS X System Preference Pane that runs in the background and adds calendar sharing capabilities to iCal. Leveraging Apple Sync Services and Bonjour, calendar events created by one user are instantly published and synchronized with other iCal users on the network. Users can share and edit calendars, make changes on each others calendars, and everything is automatically synchronized between each user, on each Mac.

Feature Highlights in Version 1.0:

Bonjour Networking: Calendars are automatically published on a local area network without the need for a dedicated server.

Multi-User Editing: BusySync allows multiple users to share and edit calendars. Changes made by one user are instantly synchronized with all others on the network.

Security: Calendars can be password protected to provide different groups of users with different access privileges, including read/write, read-only, or no access.

Offline Access: Changes made to a shared calendar while disconnected from a home or office network are automatically synchronized when connected.

Supported Languages:
* English, French, German, Japanese

System Requirements:
* Mac OS X 10.4 (Tiger) or Mac OS X 10.5 (Leopard)
* Universal Binary: Works great on both Intel and PowerPC

Pricing and Availability:
BusySync 1.0 is available directly from BusyMac.com. Pricing for new customers starts at $19.95 USD per user, with multi-unit discounts available.

How does BusySync differ from the group scheduling features in Leopard iCal?
BusySync is targeted at families and small workgroups that wish to share calendars without the need for a dedicated server. Leopard iCal supports CalDAV, a client/server scheduling specification targeted at large workgroups. It requires a dedicated server and software included in Mac OS X Server. If you don’t have a dedicated server running Mac OS X Server, the new group scheduling features in Leopard iCal are not available to you.

Website
Product URL
Direct Download Link
Purchase Link
Screenshot
Video Tutorial

Aero Quartet has released version 3.5 of SimpleMovieX, the lightweight Mac OS X movie editor. With a feature set roughly similar to QuickTime Pro, SimpleMovieX extends editing capabilities to other popular video formats AVI, Google Video, MPEG-1, MPEG-2 and MPEG-4. The main advantage of native editing is speed and quality, since no re-encoding is required to save edited movies.

This new version adds a redesigned timeline, now using in/out/playhead model and can create MPEG-4 file with chapter markers, to be enjoyed on your iPod or iPhone.

Powerful editing operations like splitting a movie into clips, a Batch Converter, an Audio Waveform tool to make sharp audio editing and synchronization, are among most appreciated features of version 3. SimpleMovieX also provides a search pane to quickly find a sequence and an adaptable timeline for accurate playhead positioning even in large duration movies. Huge files beyond 4GB, for example 6 hours of TV recording, can be edited without truncating.

SimpleMovieX is a tool for a wide public: Discriminating TV viewers that clean their recordings of commercials, Users of a digital camera, mobile phone or camcorder that need to edit, compile, convert and share their personal footage, Video collectors compiling music concerts or Google Video shorts, …

For occasional users, an unlimited demo version of SimpleMovieX is available for free download.

SimpleMovieX requires Mac OS X v10.3 or higher. QuickTime MPEG-2 Playback Component is required to take advantage of MPEG-2 capabilities. QuickTime Pro is not required.

Website
Product URL
Direct Download Link

Karelia Software announced the release of the Karelia iMedia Browser, a free utility to add the familiar “media browser” experience to just about any Mac application.

Built from the ground up to resemble the media browser found in several Apple applications, the Karelia iMedia Browser is a stand-alone utility that can be used to quickly access a user’s library of photos, sounds, movies, or bookmarks.

“We initially built an iMedia Browser into Sandvox, our website-creation tool, because we wanted Sandvox users to be able to access their media as easily as they could from Apple’s own programs,” said Dan Wood of Karelia Software. “Since it’s a general need, we decided to release it as a utility that can be used in conjunction with just about any other application as well.”

The Karelia iMedia Browser allows users to browse their libraries of photos (iPhoto, Aperture, and Pictures folders); music (iTunes library, GarageBand songs, and Music folders); movies (from iTunes, iPhoto, and Movies folders), and bookmarks (from several leading web browsers). It can be activated either from the dock or from a small icon in the menu bar.

Karelia Software also announced the immediate public availability of the source code for the underlying media browser framework, written by developers at Karelia and other companies. In addition to being used in Sandvox, the iMedia framework is currently used by developers around the world in a number of third-party applications, including Skitch, MemoryMiner, Ubercaster, iStar Composer, Norkross Movie, and Posterino. The iMedia framework is extensible, allowing developers to add new media types or sources of media.

“For more than a year, the Karelia iMedia Browser framework has provided the critically important media browsing functionality in MemoryMiner,” said John C. Fox, MemoryMiner’s creator. Integration of the iMedia Framework was unbelievably easy. I’m personally grateful to the folks at Karelia for having made this engineering work freely available to the Mac developer community.”

The Karelia iMedia Browser is available for downloading from Karelia’s website. It is a Universal Binary for PowerPC and Intel architectures, and requires Mac OS X 10.4 “Tiger” or 10.5 “Leopard.” The download contains nine languages: English, French, Italian, Danish, German, Swedish, Japanese, and Simplified and Traditional Chinese.

Additional URLs:
Google Code page for iMedia: http://code.google.com/p/imedia/
iStar Composer: http://www.scriptsoftware.com/composer/
Ubercaster: http://www.ubercaster.com/
Norcross Movie: http://www.norrkross.com/software/movie/
Skitch: http://plasq.com/skitch
MemoryMiner: http://www.memoryminer.com/
Posterino: http://zykloid.com/posterino

iMedia

Money 2.4 helps people organize and manage their personal finances quickly and easily. It has all the features required for personal or small-business accounting. Version 2.4 sports a new and simplified user interface, smart accounts, powerful reports, bill management, budget management, the ability to transfer transactions from one account to another, improved accounts management, banking management, payee management, improved categories management, OFX file format support, and more.

Jumsoft tried to keep the application simple for users who do not have the time to learn about accounting. The developers of Money 2.4 believe that people are capable of managing their own finances. Money 2.4 helps its users with elegance and ease-of-use. Even more important the application’s full compatibility is with virtually all of the standards and concepts of accounting.

Major Features in Money 2.4:
Money 2.4 features new and simplified user interface, smart accounts, powerful reports, bill management, budget management, the ability to transfer transactions from one account to another, improved accounts management, banking management, payee management, improved categories management, OFX file format support, improved QIF support, and support for multiple currencies.

New features: Portfolio and Investment Accounts.
* QIF and OFX imports have been improved.
* Added Transaction Security to Smart Account’s criteria.
* Fixed bug with transfer between accounts with different currencies.
* Other small bug fixes.

System Requirements:
Money 2.4 requires Mac OS X Tiger 10.4.3 or later. Money 2.4 is Universal Binary, so it will run on any Intel or PPC Mac.

A single license of Money 2.4 is $39. Pre-registered Money users can upgrade to Money 2.4 for $10.

Jumsoft
Money 2.4
Getting Money 2.4

TORONTO, ON. - October 17, 2007 - Ironic Software today released the first public preview of Leap, a major new application that will change how people interact with their computer. Leap is the second application released by Ironic, the first being the well regarded ‘Yep’ which is a PDF manager for OS X.

As an early product tester put it: “Leap gives me the feeling of having control over the chaos that inevitably creeps into the home folder over the years, despite all efforts. And its incredible what stuff you can find that you didn’t even know exists”

As Mac users for over 20 years, the two principals of Ironic Software have always been disappointed at the performance of the Finder. Leap is their response to the feeling that one gets while looking for files - even files that are in a known location - in Apple’s Finder.

Ted Leckie, user interface guru at Ironic puts it like this:
“Locating a file that you know the exact location of can involve many clicks as a folder hierarchy is descended. Make a wrong turn - and you are out of luck. Leap solves that problem by getting rid of the hierarchy, while allowing you to find what you are looking for in just a click or two”.

Leap’s main other author is Tom Andersen, who has worked with Ted since they first developed Starry Night, an Apple design award winning astronomy program. Tom has designed the engine of Leap to be able to deal with the untold thousands of files that sit on a modern computer today.

Tom had this to add:
“There are other search tools and Finder replacements out there, but they tend to fall into two categories, they are either like the Finder with more buttons, or they are text based search tools like Google Desktop. The problem with Google Desktop is that you search for items by entering text, when many of the documents on a typical computer are best remembered by what they look like. Leap allows you to look for documents visually, with text, by file size - however you remember it”.

The program features an iTunes like interface, making it easy to use, so that users can be doing useful things within a few seconds. It also has a great levels of customization available, so that users can set up Leap to reflect the files they care about and the workflow that they perform daily. It supports drag and drop, saving searches, and more. One big feature that it brings is the ability to ’see’ many of your files as they actually look, instead of an icon. This is a feature also of Apple’s upcoming Leopard release, but Leap users can get that today in OS X 10.4 Tiger.

What about Leopard?
With Apple’s Leopard due out soon, a trip to Apple’s web site shows some of the features of the new OS X 10.5 Finder. As Ted points out: “The Leopard Finder is one of the big reasons we developed Leap - we are disappointed with the lack of any real new direction the Finder is taking.”

Leap requires a Mac running OS X 10.4.8 or later. It is available for $34 USD from Ironic’s website.

Ironic Software was founded in 2006 to develop Mac only software. The company is located in Meaford and Toronto, Ontario Canada. The company has developed two software products. Yep - the best PDF manager for the Mac, and Leap - the Finder how it was meant to be.

Review copies of Leap are of course available to members of the Press.

Ironic Software Website
Leap URL
Download trial version
Purchase
Leap Screenshot
Icon