MacEdition Pro News : May 29, 2003
Everybody likes a bargain
by MacEdition Staff (feedback)
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In this issue
- New search and catalogue programs released
- Easy burn with better compatibility
- Colourfull brings weather and eBay utilities
- Speed Download gets quicker
- Captain makes secure download
- Helpful plug-in for FileMaker
- Noteworthy updates
Thumbs up for search utility
DEVONtechnologies released a utility that brings Mac OS X users all the usefulness of of the old Sherlock app without the need for indexing a hard drive.
EasyFind finds files, folders or contents in any file without the need for indexing. EasyFind also features case sensitive or insensitive search, boolean operators, wildcards and searching for phrases. EasyFind uses multithreading and so is very responsive even with multiple search processes running, provides contextual menus and Mac OS X services and displays the location of each item in a separate column for a better overview. Finally, EasyFind uses little memory, supports drag-and-drop, the clipboard and optionally finds invisible items or items within packages.
The free program also can be incorporated as a search engine for DEVON’s DEVONthink database/information management program which recently went through a rev where the program picked up some speed, reduced the program’s memory footprint, and addressed some minor bug issues.
The new version of DEVONthink also added a limited compatibility for Quark XPress documents and QuickTime files by allow those files to be incorporated as links in the database.
DEVON also released ThumbsUp, a thumbnail cataloguer which uses drag and drop to build its image database. The free software supports all image formats used in Mac OS X and QuickTime, including PDF.
Both apps can be found on DEVON’s download page.
Burnin’ for free
Centromedia has come up with a CD/DVD burning software that is compatible with a wider range of hardware, offers a more simplistic method of burning discs and the ability to relegate burns as a background process under OS X.
Disc Burner for Macintosh lets you create and share your music, video, photos and data on CD and DVD with power and simplicity! Built for Mac OS X. Protect your valuable data on CDs or share it with Windows PC users. The perfect burning companion to iMovie, iTunes, and DVD authoring software that burns fast, burns clean, burns on more drives, and now burns in the background too.
The software can be downloaded from Centromedia’s product page.
Stormy weather in the Dock
Colourfull Creations has revamped their offer, Simple Weather, to be able to provide Mac OS X users a weather update by looking at their Dock.
Simple Weather’s new features include: smaller window size, for OS X users Simple Weather will now show “weather in the Dock”, and a few other minor fixes. Simple Weather puts the weather on your desktop for fast and easy reference. Simple Weather has an easy to set up and easy to understand interface that “just gives you the facts” that you will need to keep you informed throughout the day and week.
The US$5.99 shareware title provides weather reports only for US locations and is available for download from the company’s product page.
The company also released Maxi Bidder, a utility that lets you track eBay auctions and incorporates a scheduling feature that allows the user to place a bid automatically in the last few minutes before the bid closes.
The US$9.99 utility can be obtained from Colourfull’s Web site.
Fast gets faster
YazSoft has updated their Speed Download utility adding support for the latest public release of Safari, updating their plugins to improve speed and compatibility with a wider range of servers. improved the program’s handling of ZIP files and downloads from local networks, and fixed a scheduling bug.
The US$20 utility is available from the YazSoft site.
Captain goes for security
Xnet Communications has updated Captain FTP to work with secure downloads offered from SFTP servers, a more secure download protocol offered by SSH servers.
Xnet also reworked Captain FTP to make it able to download files and folders after the user enters the target’s path and the program now has the ability to add Local Area Network (LAN) drives as targets in its favorites menu toolbar icon.
The update is free to users of Captain 2.0 and costs US$25 for new users to acquire. The download is available from Xnet’s product page.
Plugging into FileMaker
24U Software released 24U SimpleHelp Plug-in, a tool which FileMaker developers can use to quickly implement help tags in projects they are developing with the Apple-owned database environment.
This FileMaker plug-in enables solution developers to define help tags (tool tips) for layout objects and controls, such as data fields, buttons, pictures etc. Help tag is a brief text message (help, tip, description) that appears when you move the mouse pointer over an object or a hot rectangle. This way, 24U SimpleHelp Plug-In allows developers to create FileMaker solutions with an intuitive user interface!
The company has posted a couple of demo movies of the new software in action on their Web site. The software carries a US$37 per user price tag but multiuser licenses are available.
Quickie updates
MacASP has updated their implementation for providing dynamic Web content by giving their program better support for sendmail, adding email verification, and compatibility for virtual hosting on MacHTTP 2.6.
MacASP is free to users wishing to use the program on Apple’s Personal Web Sharing (Classic) and on MacHTTP. Users of other Apple-hosted web serving platforms are expected to pay €299 for the software. MacASP can be obtained from the company’s Web site.
Fledgling space faring traders and wannabe intergalactic mercenaries may well want to check out the latest rev of the known universe’s best shareware title EV Nova. The latest rev fixes a short list of bugs and pays particular attention to fine tuning the various scenarios within the game. The full 76MB download is available from the macgamefiles.com server. Those who already have the game can download their 22.4MB patch from a different page on the same Web site.
Looking for old ProNews segments? Check out our index at http://old.macedition.com/news/. Do you have news releases or tidbits of interest to the Macintosh professional? Send them to pronewsnotes@macedition.com.