Freeverse has sent along the heads up on a sale they're having today only. To celebrate "Leap Day" (yes, we're only having this twenty-four hour period today because it's a Leap Year), they're selling everything they got for an extra 20% off whenever you use the code "leapyear" during checkout.

What could you buy? Well, you could grab their 3D Desktop Defense-like game Horde of Orcs for a mere $20, pick up Neon Tango (a flashy Asteroids-like shooter) for the same price, or grab Wingnuts 2, which isn't too bad a bit of pick-up-and-play shooting fun, for $24. You could also grab any of the apps they sell for the sale price, too: they've got Comic Life Deluxe for $24 and the award-winning Lineform for $64 after the discount.

Yeah, 20% ain't too huge, but hey it's only Leap Day, and if you've been waiting to grab some of this Freeverse 'ware this makes today the perfect time to do it.

Chalk this one up to bad press release timing: we neglected to note the release of a major update to Freeverse's Lineform vector art application, announced on January 14 (otherwise known as Steve's Eve). The new version includes full Leopard support and adds hooks for drawing tablet pressure sensitivity, plus many smaller feature and performance updates.

Lineform 1.5 is $79.95 either direct from Freeverse or in convenient boxed form via Apple or Amazon. The 8.1 MB demo is downloadable as well. If you're a forlorn Freehand veteran or facing off sticker shock for Illustrator, take a look.

Freeverse, winner of many design awards (and publisher of Marathon on the 360-- I had no idea!) is throwing down with a software sale on their website. By using the code montyrules with any purchase before September 20th, you can pick up any of the software and games they're selling for a whopping 30% off.

Heroes V for $35! Euchre (my favorite card game ever) for $14! Wingnuts 2 for $21! And the apps aren't to be scoffed at either-- they've got the great Comic Life, Lineform, and Sound Studio 3 all on sale as well.

Woot for Freeverse, and woot for selling great games and apps for cheaper than usual. Now that you guys are flush with money, how about convincing Microsoft to let you put that Euchre game on my 360, too?

Thanks, Brian!

Rumors of Freehand's demise have been raised and squashed before, but now it's official. Gruber points to this notice that Adobe has canned further development Freehand in favor of Illustrator. Adobe is offering some discounts on Illustrator for registered owners of Freehand, as well as some tutorials aimed at helping folks move over, but they will not be offering any further updates to Freehand. Apparently in an effort to capitalize on annoyance of longtime Freehand users, Freeverse is offering a discount on their competing vector graphics package Lineform. Just enter code "freehand" to get $30 off the regular price of $79.95 until June 1st. This looks like a great deal on Lineform; even if it's not quite as powerful as Illustrator, it's still a substantial vector graphics application for about $50.

[via The Apple Blog]

It's things like the iChat Theater page at Apple's Developer site that make me just fine with the delay of Mac OS X Leopard. They say 'good things come to those who wait,' but from what I'm reading at the iChat Theater page, that phrase is more like 'fantastic, amazing and mind-blowing things come to those who wait' when applied to the new technologies coming in Leopard. While most of that page is geared towards developers, offering things like code snippets to get them excited and motivated to build their apps to work with Leopard's iChat, the first two paragraphs are enough for 'the rest of us' to get a mouth-watering glimpse of just how much the new iChat could change the way we work and play once Leopard does arrive.

In short, iChat Theater is a new feature that will allow the broadcast of, and collaboration on, just about anything we do on our Mac. Of course, a developer will have to design their app specifically to incorporate these new features (hint: submitting feedback and feature requests is a good thing), but just consider the possibilities: instead of having to jam pack all your tech support calls into that once-or-twice-a-year family holiday trip, you can fire up Leopard's iChat and show mom and dad how to make a slideshow in iPhoto over the web, with both video and audio of yourself and iPhoto. Now expand a little: is your job on the verge of granting you telecommuting privileges? Or perhaps you're a teacher or a technology scout for an educational organization? This new Leopard feature opens doors much larger than the one for mom and pop; with iChat Theater, teachers and businessmen alike will be able to work their magic in entirely new ways, and not just with the tools Apple provides. The beauty of iChat Theater is that it's an open platform, so to speak; want to brainstorm in OmniGraffle with a colleague on the opposite side of the country? Need to teach a last-minute digital art class in Lineform for a friend halfway across the world? No sweat. Although I have no idea whether The Omni Group or Freeverse have already hopped on the iChat Theater bandwagon, plenty of comments and requests from their users could probably ensure they do.

iChat Theater is gonna be a big'un boys and girls, and I already have a couple handfuls of reasons as to why I can wait for Apple to take their time and (hopefully) get it right.

We've mentioned Lineform a couple of times, but the newly released version 1.3 of Freeverse's Illustrator alternative vector illustration program adds a significant new feature: PDF import and editing. You can now directly import a PDF into Lineform, resize it, and mark it up with the standard Lineform drawing tools. Other new features include improved SVG support and 256000% (!) maximum zoom.

Lineform remains $79.95 and a demo is available.

[Via Daring Fireball]

Freeverse, the company behind many a fun Mac app, recently held a contest related to their vector illustration program, Lineform. The contest was simple: submit an image made with Lineform and you get a chance to win $1000. Not too shabby. The contest is over, and the winner was Paul Davidson.

You can see Paul's work, and the work of the runners up, on Freeverse's website. The original Lineform files are also available for download.

You may remember Lineform as the winner in the student category of the Apple Design Awards, but now it is now a part of Freeverse's software catalog. $79.99 gets your version 1.2 of Lineform which is a Universal Binary (which Freeverse told me would launch in a second on a MacBook Pro, and they were right).

$79.99 for an Illustrator alternative that is Universal? Not too shabby at all.

Lineform, formerly Inform, has reached 1.1 and added many features. This $79 graphics program now boasts AppleScriptablity, support for Core Image, media browsing and much more.

This program is designed to be powerful but simple to use and seems to be focused on logo design.