Our good friends at Freeverse are having a 30% off sale, one of their biggest lately, this week on almost everything in their catalog, from the tower defense game Horde of Orcs to the award-winning Lineform. The sale lasts through October 7th, and to get the discount, just put "MONTYMAIL" in as a coupon code during checkout. If you've been thinking about picking up one of their apps or games, now's the time.

Unfortunately, none of the discounts work for any of their iPhone apps, but they did just drop the price on MotoChaser, one of the best accelerometer racing games available (and featured in the commercial above, on the "funnest" iPod ever), down to $4.99. It's too bad that there's no demo available, but I can tell you that as these accelerometer racers go, it's a good time.

BriteMac has announced special pricing for their JetSet iPhone expense tracker to celebrate the release of the update to version 1.1. Through October 6th, you can purchase JetSet 1.1 for US$4.99, five dollars off of the regular App Store (click opens iTunes) price of US$9.99.

There are a number of other expense managers for iPhone, but I use JetSet for some specific features -- the ability to capture iPhone photos of receipts and attach them to expenses, being able to export expense information to Google spreadsheets or to Excel, and global expense views that "package" expenses that are for a particular project or trip.

JetSet also has 15 major expense categories, visible in the screenshot here, as well as well over 100 subcategories. This speeds up data entry since it's usually not necessary to type in category names.

If you're not using JetSet for expense tracking, what do you use? Leave us a comment.

TUAW's going Back to School! We'll be bringing you tips and reviews for students, parents and teachers right up until the bell rings in September. Read on for nifty supplies for any student.

Today only, RadTech is offering 20 percent off regularly-priced backpacks, cases, laptop bags and sleeves, including bags with photovoltaic cells to help charge your electronic devices. Solar panels on the bag can provide up to four watts of power for your iPod or phone.

Make sure to use the promo code SCHOOL88 when you check out to take advantage of the offer.

While supplies last, you can save $20 on refurbished 8GB and 16GB iPod touches and iPhones. These earlier model units are marked as "Original Software Release" and cost slightly less than those already upgraded to current software. Stock has been going in and out all weekend -- so if you don't see units for sale right away, keep checking back. At some point, I'm sure Apple will run out of stock on both touches and iPhones but for now, do try, try again.

Thanks Matt D

Update: TUAW reader Ian seems to have hit the bullseye: 'So this means that although you save $20 on the touch, you have to pay $20 to get the January apps? Isn't that what "original software release" means? '

Atomic Bird software, makes of MondoMouse and Macaroni (an app designed to automate maintenance, according to our fine commenters-- thanks!) has reached its five year birthday, and to celebrate, owner Tom Harrington is giving away some software. Through the 19th, every fifth order on Atomic Bird's website is going to be completely free. If you've been thinking about picking one of those up (or give one of them a try and decide you'd like it) order before the 19th and you've got a 20% chance of getting it for free.

And even if you don't buy anything, Tom's got a good writeup on his blog about how he got started selling software over the internet. I've always enjoyed hearing stories like this-- whenever you make good software, the Mac community seems completely ready to support what you do. While users of other systems (no names) seem to grab at the free stuff, no matter how buggy or slow it is, Mac users always seem ready to pay a premium price for a premium product. Then again, maybe I'm putting the horse before the cart on that one.

At any rate, congrats Atomic Bird on five years of successfully selling that software, and here's to many more.

[via Gus Mueller]

Combining two of our little trends lately, retroware and eBay vintage, here's the motherload for any NeXT fan-- a complete (and boy do I mean complete) set of NeXT computer cube stuff on eBay.

Holy cow that's a lot of stuff-- he's a matching grayscale (!) display and speakers, all the cables, a spare motherboard, all the books and discs, and even the original sticker sheet. Who keeps the sticker sheet?!? The thing even still runs Omniweb (inside NeXTSTEP 3.3 patch 2), and he's got a screenshot of Google up and working.

So how much will it run you? Currently, the auction is at $710 with a business week left to go even higher, but seriously now-- how much is it worth to you to get a little piece (or in this case, a lot of pieces) of non-Apple Jobs?

Thanks, Richard! (who saw it on Boing Boing)

After we posted that neon Apple sign a little while back, reader Franco thought we'd get a kick out of this Apple flag for sale on eBay, and he was right. The best news is that right now, it's sitting pretty at only $10 (reserve not yet met, though) flying upwards-- what are you TUAW readers, rich?-- so you could own a little piece of Apple history for cheap.

As for dating it, the page says the 80s. No mention of Macintosh might put it before 1984, but that's just a guess-- Apple IIs were known as the first "personal computers" and those were made all the way up until the early 1990s. I really love those fonts, though, and of course the rainbow logo is a classic.

Last week I wrote about something brewing over on the MacHeist pages, and this week it looks like the project has come to fruition-- it's called Skunk Works, and in addition to the giveaways they're doing with the MacUpdate promo, they're now giving away software.

Yes, signing up on that page is supposed to give you a free copy of Linkinus (up to an including 1.1, not including 1.2, so read the fine print), the IRC client we mentioned earlier this year. The app is also now included in the MacHeist version of the MacUpdate bundle (so if you already bought that, save the free copies for someone else), and MacHeist recommends that even if you get it for free, you go ahead and purchase it anyway (to support the developers). Plus, a purchase will clear you until the next major version, not just 1.1.

Like some of you guys, I'm getting a little tired of all the hype around these Mac software bundles, so I've been trying to cut back on this kind of news. Still, free software is hard to pass up. If you've been looking for a substitute for Colloquy, this might be just what you need at a price you can't pass up.

Spongebob is ON SALE! You can pick up an entire season of Spongebob for just 21 bucks--rather than the normal $40. Apple and Nickelodeon are running a Summertime stock-up-on-Nick sale with titles ranging from Dora to Invader Zim to the Fairly Oddparents. If you've got a kid, and you've got some loooong family trips coming up or if you've just got an embarassing but potentially treatable familial TV-viewing habit, now is the time to stock up on Nick at iTunes. Yadi yadi limited time blah blah blah.

Last October was when we first mentioned KeyCue from ergonis software, the utility that displays all the keyboard shortcuts for the app you're in, and even though I fell in love with it I somehow missed its update to version 3.0. Luckily, today's MacZOT was just the reminder I needed, as KeyCue is on sale today for only $12.99, a 35% discount from its regular $19.99. If you've ever wanted a handy birds-eye view of every shortcut for an app without having to dig around in menus and manuals, KeyCue is definitely the way to go. It even works with just about every app I've thrown at it, including Firefox and Photoshop. This latest 3.0 version added a performance boost of up to 10x when collecting shortcuts, as well as a theming engine with a new Dashboard theme that darkens the rest of the screen when activating the shortcuts window.

KeyCue is a great app that I personally recommend, and it's a steal at today's MacZOT price.

Ars Technica reports that Apple TV has begun to show up at Target and Costco stores. Apple TVs have been sighted at the Lincoln Park, Chicago Costco retailing for $289.99, saving you a cool ten bucks off the normal price. Jacqui Cheng writes that the normal Costco return policies seem to apply to Apple TV.

Speaking of Costco, we last covered discounted iTunes gift cards during the Christmas season. Now that Mother's Day is nearly here, don't forget about this great Costco iTunes gift card deal. Pick up a $50 gift card for just $44.99 plust $0.50 shipipng and handling. That's a nice 10% savings. You can use the savings to pick up a rose or a chocolate or two. Mom will thank you as she rocks down to Nirvana or Barry Manilow or whatever.

This isn't exactly a deal, but it is for a good cause. Several independent Mac developers have gotten together and are offering their products for a charity sale on May 2nd to benefit the Virginia Tech Memorial Fund. The products will sell for their normal prices, but the devs "will donate the proceeds of their sales" to the Fund. There are a good number of products being offered from a variety of developers, so if you've been on the fence about one of these applications today would be a good day to grab it.

We've mentioned Mac Pilot - a powerful Mac OS X tweaking and optimizing utility - before, as it's a great piece of software for bending nearly every aspect of the OS to your bidding. While Koingo Software typically offers a 15 day trial for Mac Pilot with a license going for $19.95, MacZOT has a 50% off deal today that knocks the price down to $9.95. That's a heckuva deal, but in true MacZOT form, it's today only, so get a move on and try Mac Pilot out if you haven't already.

RapidWeaver, arguably the 800 lb. gorilla of the WYSIWYG web design space on the Mac, is being sold for $27.97 on MacZOT - a 30% discount off its retail price of $39.95. The debate around sites like MacZOT aside, I view this simply as a killer sale on a rockin' app.

Now I honestly haven't checked in on a MacZOT deal in a while, but it appears RapidWeaver is up on the block only through tonight and tomorrow, so act fast.

I was in an Apple Store here in CO yesterday and noticed that retail boxes of Parallels Desktop have arrived on the shelves. In fact, I had a nice discussion with a customer who was switching because he could now run Windows on a new Mac (he never considered Virtual PC an option - I personally don't blame him). He even used the term 'safety net' to refer to how often he hoped to have to run Windows - if ever.

I also just received an email from Parallels promoting a $20 rebate with the purchase of Parallels Desktop ($80) and Windows XP (either $200 for Home or $300 for Pro). The rebate is good through August 15th, and Windows XP must be purchased within 14 days of Parallels Desktop.