Ollie Wagner sends word that he has release both of his Spencere apps, Menuet and Art Collector, as careware. Over on his site, you can get both of the apps for free, as long as you promise to donate to the charity of your choice (he's listed eight good choices if you don't have a preference).

We've covered both before-- Menuet is a pretty iTunes controller with a few other features built in, including Last.fm support, themes, and a sleep timer. Art Collector grabs artwork from Amazon for your iTunes library-- it's a little useless, because iTunes now does this for you, but if there are a few covers iTunes can't find, maybe Art Collector can.

Together, they used to run around $13 (although Art Collector separately was $7, and was originally bundled with Menuet). If you've seen these before and never gotten a chance to try them, here's it is, and hopefully you can help out a charity as well.

One of the backend changes that came with the release of iTunes 7 is how the app stores album artwork. The days of embedding album artwork in music files are gone, due in part (I assume) to the purchase and integration of CoverFlow, a flashy new way to browse your albums. Artwork is now stored in a new ~/Music/iTunes/Album Artwork/ folder, but what if you want your album artwork embedded in those files? Users can have any number of reasons for wanting this, such as the Growl notifications that Quicksilver creates when iTunes starts playing something new. Those notifications (as I understand it) are incapable of properly display album artwork unless the image is embedded in the file, so iTunes 7 has created a bit of a conundrum with this new organization feature.

Never fear, however, for Doug's AppleScripts for iTunes is yet again to the rescue. Doug has a handy script aptly titled Embed Artwork that can do just what it says: embed the album art back into your files. This should make things easier on Quicksilver + Growl, as well as if you move your media files to a new computer, artwork in tow.

As usual, Doug's scripts are provided for free, but donations for all his hard work are strongly encouraged.

[via Quicksilver's forums]

Kavasoft has released version 1.0 of Curator, an iTunes Artwork management utility. Curator allows you to search for missing artwork and download any MIA items from Amazon. It also has a few spiffy features like creating Finder icons for your music and helping you perform custom searches for hard-to-find artwork. It costs $18 and there's a free trial version. One thing I've got to give Kavasoft huge props for is it's online guided product tour. I wish every software developer provided one. It gives a quick rundown of the software, complete with screen shots.

These days, there is absolutely no shortage of apps that let you control iTunes in one way or another. You can use your PSP, tiny menubar controllers, countless iTunes widgets and now - CoverSutra. Featuring a stylish bezel with loads of control feedback and album art display, CoverSutra aims to give you complete control over iTunes without invading your space. It can even work with the Apple Remote, offering visual feedback without the need to enter something like Front Row.

A 10-day demo of CoverSutra is available, and it sells for just under $13 USD (€9.95). While CoverSutra is a brand new 1.0 app, the developer is promising "plenty of new things in [the works] for you," and upgrades are free until version 2.0. If other controllers such as the über-everything Quicksilver don't quite float yer boat, CoverSutra looks like a great solution for controlling iTunes without interrupting your flow.