Along with the recent updates to Mac OS X, Apple issued an update to the iPhone beta. We're now up to iPhone beta 6. Currently, Apple has given us no beta update information.

Go to the jump for a liveblog with details as they come in!

Adobe Labs today released public betas for the next generation of Dreamweaver, Fireworks, and Soundbooth apps, part of their Creative Suite product.

Once downloaded and launched, the betas will only be active for 48 hours -- unless you have a CS3 license. Creative Suite 3 customers will be able to extend the trial period (presumably until the final versions are released, though the deactivation date is not mentioned in the press release).

The Dreamweaver beta includes a much-anticipated (at least by me) change to the WebKit rendering engine for previewing and live editing.

Fireworks has been re-vamped to look and feel more like other Creative Suite apps, and now allows users to export design comps as interactive PDF documents.

The Soundbooth beta now includes multiple track support, and the new ability to match volume levels across multiple files. Plus, users can preview MP3 compression settings before saving them.

Soundbooth (719MB) requires Mac OS X 10.4.11 or later, running on an Intel processor. Fireworks (634MB) and Dreamweaver (262MB) have the same OS requirement, but can run on a G5 processor or better.

Thanks, Kent!

In a Memorial Day treat for users, Wil Shipley of Delicious Monster announced via a tweet earlier this evening that a beta of Delicious Library 2 is now available for download and purchase. We've been waiting eagerly for DL2 for quite a while now, along with everyone else.

Interestingly, on first launch of the new beta you're presented with the dialog on the right. Apparently DL2's scrolling and display performance relies on fixes delivered in Mac OS X 10.5.3 -- that is, fixes you can't get yet in an OS build that hasn't shipped. Patience is a virtue, I suppose.

Update: Wil Shipley replies below. The beta test is of the integrated store functionality in DL2; the software itself is not launched yet, so be cautious.

Your response to last week's post about Evernote was amazing, with over 250 people requesting beta invitations and jamming my email inbox. Evernote has followed up with a 24-hour open invitation just for TUAW readers. There's also a new 1.1.0a build of the beta that resolves a crashing bug.

Hurry over to this link:

http://www.evernote.com/Registration.action?code=tu4w7

before 2 PM ET on May 20th to get your very own invitation!

The beta just got bettah!

TUAW recently featured an interview with Phil Libin, the CEO of Evernote, who stated that the ultimate goal of the application is to be a "universal human memory extension." I've been using Evernote for over a month now and love it -- I've sucked all of my business cards into Evernote with my iSight or iPhone camera, and use the program instead of a card file. Evernote's text recognition simplifies tagging the cards, and I can use either the Mac app, the web client, or my iPhone to look through my database. Evernote's unique focus on images makes it quite different from other information managers like Together or Yojimbo.

The update has some great new features based on customer feedback:

• PDF support -- Evernote can now store PDFs and you can print into Evernote from any Mac application. Image-recognition isn't working for PDFs at this time, but they're working on it.
• Encryption -- Included in the last release, but not announced, encryption works with the Mac or Windows clients only, not with the web client.
• Spotlight integration -- Evernote "memories" are now searchable, and you can create Finder "smart folders" that include Evernote content.
• Mixed View Mode -- In addition to List and Thumbnail view, Evernote 1.1 has a Mixed view that shows small thumbnails with metadata for each note.
• Vertical Preview Pane -- In Mixed and Thumbnail modes, provides a big preview pane with live search results.
  

Want to give Evernote a try? I have 19 Evernote invitations for the first 19 commenters who ask for one politely.

Update: All of the invitations were swallowed up quickly by a group of very polite readers! Thanks for your comments and have fun with Evernote!

Update 2: Thanks to Evernote, I have a huge number of invitations available for TUAW readers. Leave a comment and try out Evernote.

Update 3: Sorry, everyone! I can't send out any more invitations. But thanks for playing!

Look! Up in the air! It's a bird, it's Superman; no, it's Mailplane 2 Beta!

The wizards at uncomplex gmbh have posted a beta of an upgrade to Mailplane. In case you're not familiar with it, Mailplane is a "Mac-friendly" front-end to Gmail with a powerful feature set, and a quick fly-by of the upgrade revealed even more Gmail goodness:

• Full support for Gmail 2
• mailplane:// URLs for accessing and searching your Gmail database
• A free OmniFocus clipping plugin for creating new tasks containing links to conversations in Mailplane
• Better photo attachment customization
• Assign different notification sounds and colors to specific Gmail accounts
• The ability to post Google Spreadsheet forms
• Integration with Mac OS X Address Book
• A "Do Not Disturb" mode
• and a few dozen more improvements!

Once the beta program is complete, Mailplane 2 will be free to registered users or $24.95 for single users.

Thanks for the tip, Chris!

If you've been cursing the big price tag and lack of VBA support in Microsoft Office 2008 for Mac, OpenOffice.org is coming to your rescue. Last September, the OpenOffice.org dev team announced that they would be porting the suite to run natively on the Mac. Previous versions ran under the X11 environment, which not only hogged resources, but didn't have the Aqua look and feel we all love.

OpenOffice.org 3.0 is still beta, but a quick test-drive of the application showed that it is almost ready for prime time. OOo is a full-featured office suite, complete with word processor (Writer), spreadsheet (Calc), presentation package (Impress), drawing app (Draw), as well as database tools (Base) that are sadly lacking in other office suites.

The feature set of OpenOffice.org 3 is impressive:

• Imports Microsoft Office binary (.doc, .ppt, .xls) and Office 2007/Office 2008 for Mac (.docx, .xlsx, .pptx) files
• A solver component for solving optimization problems, something lacking in Microsoft Office 2008 for Mac
• Spreadsheet workbook sharing
• Display of multiple Writer pages while editing
• MS Office-like comments in Writer
• Limited VBA macro support -- which is still better than no support
• Extensibility with Mozilla Thunderbird and Lightning, Sun Wiki Publisher and Report Builder

The price of OpenOffice.org 3 is, as always, free! If you're up to test-driving beta ware that may not necessarily be as stable or fast as your other office suite(s), click here to be transported to the beta site.

VMware has just announced VMware Fusion 2.0 Beta 1, the first beta of the second iteration of their very successful virtualization product for the Mac. As you'll recall Fusion allows you to run a host of OSes on your Intel Mac including, but not limited to, many flavors of Windows.

The above video gives you a tour of Fusion 2.0 Beta 1's top new features, including:

• Multiple monitor support (up to 10 displays!)
  
• Improved networking and printing
• Support for DirectX 9.0 Shader Model 2 (this is experimental, and it might not work on your Mac)
• A refined UI for settings and VM management

And that's just the tip of the iceberg. The beta is available now, and best of all the upgrade to version 2.0, when it comes out of beta, will be free to all Fusion users. You can register for the beta program and download the hefty 300 MB installer here.

For Mac-centric sysadmins in a Windows-flavored world, there are a few essential tools: patience, humility, and RDC. Microsoft's Remote Desktop Connection client is the easiest way for anyone on OS X to manage Windows servers near and far, and the truth is it works pretty well -- not perfectly, but capably. You can trade clipboard contents, print to your Mac-connected printers, and even share your Mac's local hard drives back to the Windows host for speedy file transfers. The last full release of RDC, however, was 1.0.3 back in 2004 -- sans Universal Binary, doesn't play well with Vista, and generally lacks pizazz.

A shiny new version 2 of RDC, rewritten from the ground up as an Intel-native app, has been in beta for months now, and it shows great promise; it's got full compatibility with the latest rev of the RD protocol, and it's downright snappy. One problem though: the beta officially expired today (March 31), and on each launch users are being prompted with the download dialog above (good luck downloading the "Lastest Version"). There isn't a new build yet, according to the Mac BU, and it's safe to keep using this beta; the nagging is annoying but not functionally problematic, and the team is working to quickly deliver a final edition.

Meanwhile, if you're being driven batty by the repeated and futile update dialogs, check out my favorite RDC stand-in: CoRD, the Mac OS X version of the open-source rdp tool. It may not have all the bells and whistles of the official tool (no clipboard sharingclipboard sharing, print/disk forwarding just released in the 0.5 beta), but for managing a handful of simultaneous sessions to a bunch of servers, it's fast and fabulous.

Thanks to everyone who sent this in.

According to our sister blog, Engadget, the iPhone 2.0 firmware has been seeded to developers. Before this update, the firmware was listed as version 1.2, but now shows up as version 2.0. Engadget says that the update didn't provide many changes: Cisco VPN tweaked, root-level mail / ActiveSync settings were changed around, but not much else.

You know the drill. Close your laptop's lid or select "Sleep" from the Apple Menu and it does just that - it goes into low-power mode, or "sleep."

That's just not good enough. Check out SmartSleep, which puts your MacBook or MacBook Pro into either Sleep Mode or Hibernate Mode, depending on several factors.

For example, if your battery is at 20%, SmartSleep puts your Mac to sleep and hibernate. If it's down to 5%, it goes right to hibernate mode, preserving items in memory. Otherwise, it just sleeps as it typically does.

Finally, you can select any of these settings as the default for your machine. SmartSleep is free.

[Via Download Squad]

Among the Macworld Best in Show winners was an application I hadn't heard of before: Flow, from Gridiron Software (makers of After Effects supercharger tool Nucleo Pro). Flow is still in pre-beta, but when it ships this summer it should make the lives of graphics and production professionals much easier by exposing the various components that go into complex documents; you'll be able to track down your source files, roll back to previous versions and perform "super collects" to grab all the files you need for final output in one package.

We got a demo of Flow at Gridiron's Macworld booth; it looks very cool, and it will be exciting to see if it lives up to its promise when it's released. Video after the jump.

MailTags has received some attention at TUAW. If you're already a fan, you'll be very excited about the MailTags 2.2 Public Beta 3 that was released today. If you're not a current user, this might be a great time to check out a plugin that improves on Mail.app by allowing comments, tags, projects and other metadata to be attached to any message (among other perks).

Version 2.2pb3 introduces "MailTags Extras", which appears to be a plugin architecture for MailTags. It comes bundled with a first round of these extras, which include functionality for iCal Events and Todos and a quick way to color messages with a swatch palette in the sidebar. And as extras, these features can be individually disabled or uninstalled. Throw in some fixes for things like tagging issues, working with preferences and conflicts with other plugins and this is a release worth talking about.

With a final release scheduled for this month, this beta is maturing an already great plugin. MailTags 2.2 (Leopard) will be a free upgrade for registered 2.0 and 2.1 users, and the beta is available now.

Screencasting is becoming a standard method of conveying software-related information. I'm fairly certain that even my mom knows the word, which is my typical buzz-guage. And here you were, thinking "I wish there was yet another contender in the screencast recording arena", right? Lucky you.

Synium's Screenium, which is currently in beta preview, is a new arrival in an already teeming category of software. It has standard features like fullscreen, fixed area and mouse-follow capture, hotkey integration and adjustable quality/frame rate with capture presets. It also boasts a single window capture mode and frame rates up to 60fps. I don't know why you'd need to capture a screen at 60fps, but it can't hurt to know it's available.

In my testing, Screenium performed exceptionally well in the area of small filesize, high quality captures and its default presets were simple and useful. It also gets high marks for ease of use. And it didn't max out my CPU and turn my fans into Harrier jets after 2 minutes, which is kind of nice when you're recording microphone audio. It's got some distance to cover before the official release in February, but Screenium is looking like a strong contender.

Psst. Perian is about to enter a private beta for version 1.1. If you recall, last time Perian went into beta mode the software leaked. This was generally a bad thing as a buggy and unstable version made the rounds, hitting Mac Update at one point, before the team was ready for it to go public. This time, they're reacting by limiting the beta list to users who have made donations and help support development. If you've donated to Perian, keep your eyes open for an invitation email.