Damn. iPhone developers have been clamming up over the last few weeks, so we haven't had much to post in the App News Roundup. Now that it's getting closer to i-Day Friday, the tips are starting to pour in.
Deepak Mantena of Tapeshow told us about Chores, his GTD app for iPhone (see screenshots above). It will be in the App Store, with a Mac companion app coming in August. He'll also have Wordy (for helping you improve your vocabulary), Gratuity (easy tip calculator), and Fright (a good way to scare your friends) in the App Store Friday.
Another ebook reader app for iPhone has been announced; Lexcycle Stanza will be in the App Store on Friday for free. Stanza uses Project Gutenberg eTexts so you can have a library of classics at your fingertips.
Developer Pascal Bourque let us know that he's submitted DutchTab to the App Store. You can use this app to split restaurant bills fairly between a group of co-workers or friends. His site isn't up yet, but will be soon at http://www.dutchtab.com.
3Monk3ys has three iPhone apps that available on Friday. DoubleDrop (a puzzle game) will be available for $2.99. Attitude is an simulation of an airplane's Attitude Indicator (ADI), and is priced at $2.99 as well. Finally, iSoroban is a Japanese abacus simulator priced at $1.99
Noah WItherspoon mentioned that his game Tris will be available soon after the App Store launch. Details are on his dev blog at http://twofingerplay.blogspot.com/.
Are you a pilot? Felix Khazin is releasing AirWX, an iPhone app for grabbing METARs, maps, and more. AirWX uses CoreLocation and pulls up nav charts from skyvector.com.
Kayakers are going to need a waterproof case for their iPhones! Wayne David Daley has RiverGuide coming out soon. Can you say real-time river flow info?
Thomas Aylesworth of Bayou Games let us know about Morocco, his Othello game for iPhone.
Edovia will be selling Steps, pedometer software for iPhone, starting Friday for $1.99. Their Linguo translator software will retail for $2.99 and features 17 languages.
If you need to lose a few pounds, All of Zero has iScale coming out soon. You can keep track of what you eat, find the nutrional value of various foods, and more.
Be sure to send us your app news via the Tips page.
Sometimes Command-C and Command-V just aren't enough. You're working on a project and want to capture a bunch of text, pictures, or code, and then paste it into the project you're working on. Using the Mac clipboard, you're toggling between open applications, cutting and pasting like there's no tomorrow. Wouldn't it be nice to capture all of that information into one place, then pull it out when you're ready to use it?
Corkboard (from Ayluro) does exactly this -- you press a hot key or click a menu bar icon, and a transparent "corkboard" appears. You can either paste or drag-and-drop items onto the corkboard, then hide it. If your machine crashes, or if you need to restart it, no problem -- the items that you've pinned to the corkboard are there. When you're ready to use those items (text, sound, pictures, etc..), just open Corkboard and drag them into the receiving app.
Corkboard accepts many types of media, and Ayluro has created a framework so other applications can work seamlessly with Corkboard. It's currently a time-limited beta (download here) with an introductory price of $12.99. Developer Jonathan Grynspan expects the app to leave beta in early 2009. Give it a try!
While it's not a replacement for the Amazon Kindle, ZappTek today announced Legends, an ebook service for iPhone and iPod touch. The Legends service will be available in the App Store on July 11th, with pricing of $1.99 for short stories and $4.99 for novels.
ZappTek plans on partnering with "today's hottest writers" to distribute new fiction using Legends to bring the reading experience to iPhone / iPod Touch 2.0. Each book appears as an icon on the Home screen, and the books automatically re-open to the last page you were reading. You can also bookmark or annotate any page.
Both landscape and portrait reading modes are available by rotating the iPhone, and you can invert the display (white characters on black background) by triple-tapping. Double-tapping zooms in on text.
To start off, ZappTek is making a number of short stories and novels by New York Times bestselling author Michael A. Stackpole available. Many other authors will be joining Legends soon.
If you're a voracious reader, be sure to try out Legends this Friday!
An earlier post about PocketMac Ringtone Studio for iPhone reminded me of how I put together ringtones for my iPhone. I just fire up GarageBand and iTunes, do a little quick magic, and out come the ringtones I want.
This doesn't work with protected files such as those you've purchased from the iTunes Store -- hell, Apple wants you to spend $0.99 for the tune and another $0.99 to turn it into a ringtone. The method described here works very well turning those CD snippets that you've ripped into iTunes into ringtones. Follow along after the break for the step-by-step.
People who are religious about backups, especially those who use removable media like CDs or DVDs as backup media, often find themselves in a world of hurt when they try to find individual files on a pile of discs. It's worse than finding the proverbial needle in a haystack!
Developer Robert Kuilman released version 4.0 of his Media Catalog application today (July 7, 2008). Media Catalog makes quick work of cataloguing all of those archive CDs, DVDs, and external hard drives.
While test-drivng Media Catalog, I popped in a few old backup CDs. The application catalogued hundreds of files in a few seconds, then popped the CDs out. You can also drag-and-drop volumes onto the application to add them to the catalog. Searching is extremely fast, and you can use Quick Look to preview documents as long as the original media is mounted.
Kuilman rewrote his indexing code and speed has improved up to 770% over version 3.9. You can try out Media Catalog 4.0 for free (limited to five media), or purchase it for $24.95.
Sometimes I see the name of a new piece of software that someone tips us off to, and the name conjures up something completely different from what the reality is.
PhotoTiles, for instance, brought to mind the ability to create those cool pictures that are made up of all of your other photos. You know, like having a TUAW Logo that is made up of 2,500 thumbnail pictures that are chosen for their hue and intensity, then placed in the proper location.
Well, PhotoTile doesn't exactly do that, but this small program from Limit Point Software is a handy utility. Instead of doing what I imagined, it basically takes a folder of image and turns that into one grid-like "über-image."
For example, I took my Photo Booth folder, added a TUAW logo to round up to an even number of pictures, and dragged it onto PhotoTile. In a few seconds, it created the image that you see at right.
This is great for creating contact sheets of photos. PhotoTiles is donation-ware. If you use it, make a donation and you'll get an unlock code that unlocks all utilities from Limit Point Software including PhotoTiles.
Remember those days in high school when you'd frantically write all of the facts and figures you were supposed to memorize onto your arm with a Bic pen?
If you've grown up and are now a FileMaker Pro developer, Steve Wilmes Consulting has just the thing to help you remember all of the functions and operators for FileMaker Pro versions 7 - 9. The Functions and Operators Card for FileMaker Pro can be very useful if you slept through your FileMaker Pro training.
This card is double-sided, 8.5" x 11" in size, UV coated, and absolutely jam-packed with information you'll need to figure out what you're doing in FileMaker Pro. The screenshot to the right shows you just how detailed this info is. The card is spill-proof, so dumping that grande Macchiato on it isn't going to harm anything.
The Functions and Operators Card for FileMaker Pro sells for $8.95 plus shipping. The website notes that a "Scripts and More Card" will soon be available as well.
If you're bored silly with the typical theme backgrounds in Keynote, pop on over to iPresentee's website and check out Keynote Motion Themes 2.0. These themes, which were released today (7/7/08), add five more motion themes to iPresentee's product line.
All of these themes provide moving backgrounds to catch the eyes of your audience. The five themes -- Money, Curtain, Rain, Story, and Exercise Book -- include 14 or more master slide layouts each.
Motion Themes 2.0 is available online for $25, or you can purchase individual motion themes for $10 each. And by the way, the free Keynote Objects icons are still available on the iPresentee site.
You hate Entourage, and you're not particularly fond of iCal. You've waited endlessly for Nighthawk, Contactizer Pro is too complicated, and you want a native app instead of using Google Calendar or another web calendar. And, since you're saving money for an iPhone 3G, you don't want to spend any money on a calendar app.
Maybe it's time to look at Mozilla Sunbird 0.8 for Mac OS X. It's developed by the same people who brought us Firefox and Thunderbird. It's almost identical to the Lightning calendar plugin for Thunderbird, but doesn't require that email app to run. Upon first startup, Sunbird will import events and tasks from your existing calendar application.
The UI is plain and simple, probably because this is a multi-platform application (Windows, Linux, and Solaris in addition to Mac OS X) that shares a lot of code between the different flavors. Sunbird can tie into CalDAV servers such as the one in Mac OS X Server 10.5, and can subscribe to any .ics format shared calendars. In limited testing, Sunbird felt responsive in searches and was quite stable for betaware.
Sunbird, of course, is free. If you are searching for a new calendar app, give it a try.
If you're a Mac geek who wants to make a living troubleshooting Macs, these are the certifications to get because they are your ticket to becoming a member of the Apple Consultants Network (ACN). ACNs can build a relationship with their local Apple store and get references for work that can't be performed by Genius Bar techs, and they're listed on the Apple Consultants Network website. The rest of this article is after the break.
TUAW blogger Steve Sande is an Apple Certified Technical Coordinator and volunteers as the South Central US Regional Champion for the Apple Consultants Network.
The graphic above says it all -- Firefox 3 Download Day was a success, with 8,002,530 downloads in 24 hours. Amazingly, this happened despite all of the initial download glitches that happened on Download Day. The Mozilla team is reporting that 29,116,621 copies of Firefox 3 have been downloaded as of 1:13 PM ET today.
If you signed up for Download Day notifications, you'll receive this email as well and you can get your own cheesy certificate, suitable for framing (or not).
Since I downloaded Firefox 3, I've been enjoying some of the plugins that are now residing at the bottom of my browser (Twitterfox and the Accuweather Forecastfox plugin). Firefox 3 seems faster to me, and I like the way it displays sites that are using certificates by putting a wide, clickable banner in the address bar. What are your opinions about Firefox 3?
Those wizards of widgets at iSlayer have come up with yet another really useful tool for the Dashboard. Organized is a free widget with an event calendar, world clock, notes, and to-dos, all of which are synced to iCal and Mail.
As with other iSlayer widgets like iStat menus/nano/pro, it is obvious that a lot of thought went into the design of the user interface for Organized. It packs a lot of data into a very small widget and even has a feature I immediately turned on -- the ability to shut off Marker Felt as the default font for Notes.
If you download, install, and use Organized, consider sending these guys a donation so they'll continue to develop great stuff for us.
After looking over the iPhone 3G information here on TUAW and on the AT&T website yesterday, I started thinking about what my wife and I should do with our "old" original iPhones.
Without a SIM and phone service, the original iPhone essentially becomes an iPod touch. You can still update it to the new software when it arrives, you can use it with Wi-Fi in your home, and you can use it to watch video and listen to tunes.
By keeping the old iPhone as an iPhone touch, I can get rid of some of the old iPods I have scattered around the house. What are you going to do with your iPhone after July 11th?
While the $14.95 application doesn't do anything that you can't already do with GarageBand and a little bit of knowledge, it does make creation of custom iPhone ringtones a lot easier. You can drag any unprotected music or QuickTime movie file to PocketMac Ringtone Studio, select a 30-second bit for the ringtone, and then export the ringtone into the iTunes "Ringtones" folder. The video above shows the entire process, along with a strange "jazz and random banging on the piano" soundtrack.
There are some other alternatives available for creating your own ringtones:
Is it time to finally put your HD mountain biking documentary on Blu-ray? Apple upgrade vendor MCE Technologies announced availability of a totally Mac-compatible Blu-ray recordable drive for Mac Pro and Power Mac.
The $499 (internal) drive is compatible with Mac OS X 10.5.2 and later, requiring no special drivers for burning -- just install it in your Mac Pro or Power Mac bay, pop in blank Blu-ray media, and you're ready to roll. The drive does both single-layer (6X BD-R or 2X BD-RE) and dual-layer (4X BD-R, 2X BD-RE) burning for capacities of 25GB or 50GB respectively. That's up to 50,000 photos, 12,500 music tracks, or 4 hours of HD video.
There's a $599 version bundled with Roxio Toast 9 and the Toast BD//HD Plugin, as well as an external drive with FireWire and USB 2.0 ports for $749.
To write professional Blu-ray discs that can play on set-top Blu-ray players or Sony PS3, you'll need Adobe Premiere Pro CS3 Encore along with Adobe Premiere Pro CS3 or Final Cut Pro. Basic Blu-ray movies can be burned with Roxio Toast 9 and the BD/HD Plugin.
While it's not a replacement for the 
People who are religious about backups, especially those who use removable media like CDs or DVDs as backup media, often find themselves in a world of hurt when they try to find individual files on a pile of discs. It's worse than finding the proverbial needle in a haystack!
Sometimes I see the name of a new piece of software that someone tips us off to, and the name conjures up something completely different from what the reality is. 
Remember those days in high school when you'd frantically write all of the facts and figures you were supposed to memorize onto your arm with a Bic pen? 
If you're bored silly with the typical theme backgrounds in Keynote, pop on over to 
Last month, I wrote a post about 
Those wizards of widgets at 
After looking over the
Is it time to finally put your HD mountain biking documentary on Blu-ray? Apple upgrade vendor MCE Technologies 
