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Friday deal: 1/2 off Aquafadas VideoPier HD
If you're looking for a handy way to organize your AVCHD and MPEG-2 clips from your digital video camera, you've got about five hours to get a bargain. MacZOT is offering VideoPier HD today for US$39, versus the usual price of $79. The clip manager supports codecs and clip types that aren't natively handled by the QuickTime-based apps we know and love, allowing you to save time and disk space by only transcoding what you need when working in iMovie '08. Check it out, and while you're at it take a look at PulpMotion, BannerZest and the rest of the Aquafadas product line -- all are charming apps with a different spin on media management.
CoverSutra iTunes controller 50% off today only
I'm a big fan of CoverSutra, Sophia Teutschler's sexy and incredibly useful iTunes controller. It gives you global keyboard shortcuts to skip and pause songs, display album artwork in a jewel case in popup notifications or permanently on your desktop, and it can even interact with the Last.fm music community to share the list of songs you're listening to.CoverSutra is easily a good deal for its standard $20 price tag, but for today only, software discount outlet MacZOT is selling it for just $9.95. Get it while it's hot.
MailSteward archiving app for just $34.95 at MacZOT today only
After I realized that I needed to find a way to archive and search the healthy amount of email I deal with in Apple Mail these days, I finally decided on MailSteward. There are indeed a number of email archiving options available (and Hawk Wing's list is probably still as good as any), but MailSteward's powerful array of features and ability to search the archives it creates won me over.If you're looking for a similar solution and MailSteward just might be it, today is a great day to make the jump: software discount site MacZOT is offering the MailSteward for just $34.95. That's a savings of 30% off its normal price of $50, so it's a good opportunity to finally get into the habit of archiving all that mail that you can't entirely delete just yet.
Bandwagon iTunes backup service 50% off on MacZOT today only
Bandwagon, the clever automated iTunes backup service (with a future promise of synching libraries), has certainly been making the discount news lately. Last week they whipped out a deal with DreamHost customers, and now their $24/year service is only $12 at MacZOT today only. I haven't had a chance to leave Bandwagon reliably running to get a good feel for how well it works. For the limited time I've been using it so far though, it has reliably been backing up my iTunes library to my FTP space at the steady upload bandwidth limit I set, and I'm on song 51 now. While everyone at TUAW recommends you secure a good backup solution for all your data, Bandwagon is a great, simple option for alternatively backing up your iTunes library to FTP space that's just waiting for something to store. If you're interested though, you'd better jump on the deal because MacZOT offers discounts on each app for one day only; when they're gone, they're gone.
Swift Share, Mac/PC file sharing utility, on 55% sale at MacZOT today only
Swift Share is a utility for creating and managing folders to share for both Mac OS X and Windows based machines across your network and even in remote locations. While Mac OS X allows for some limited file/folder sharing functionality via the Sharing System Preferences pane, plenty of users out there need more robust features for things like specifying various folders for sharing, setting specific permissions (read, write, both, etc.) and much more, not to mention the fact that making all this stuff work between both Macs and PCs isn't exactly one of Mac OS X's strong points either. While I admit I don't have much use for an app like Swift Share and I don't even have any Windows machines lying around the house, I can definitely see the appeal and need for an app like this. Typically, Swift Share costs a mere $19.95, but for today only that price has been temporarily set aside in a whopping 55% sale for a grand total of $8.95. Sounds like a darn good deal for anyone working between both sides of the fence.
Typinator 2.0 35% off at MacZOT today only
It hasn't even been two weeks since Typinator went 2.0, and now it's on a 35%-off sale at MacZOT for $12.99 (regular price: $19.99). This handy typing and snippet manager is a great tool for helping you work faster with text, and a deal this good is both rare and virtually impossible to beat. If you're looking to try before you buy, head over to ergonis software's Typinator product page to snag a demo, but do it quick: MacZOT's sales are one-day-only affairs. When it's gone, it's gone.
yFlicks: the 'iPhoto for your movies' is 40% off at MacZOT today only
Geeze, those MacZOT guys either have strangely coincidental timing, or I need to consider changing the locks on my house. This is either the second or third time that I discovered and thoroughly enjoyed an app, only to find it go on sale at MacZOT the next day (i.e. - I'm buying a license as I type this). The app in question is yFlicks, which we wrote about back in January (and I probably missed because of all the Macworld craziness). yFlicks is more or less a really cool 'iPhoto for your movies,' allowing you to organize and rate your movie files, as well as update the metadata associated with them. This is a great thing if, like me, you're switching from iPhoto to Aperture, because one drawback of the latter is that it doesn't import or organize movies shot with a digital camera.But yFlicks does some great stuff I've never seen in a full-on movie organizer before: it offers live video previews when you mouse over the thumbnail (so you don't have to open each movie just to get a look at it), complete support for the Apple Remote, a bookmarklet for downloading movies from popular communities like YouTube, Daily Motion and College Humor, and even a great temporary folder system that doesn't simply copy every movie into your movies folder when playing it, allowing you to pick and chose which movies you actually keep and catalog. The great thing about yFlicks is that the cleverness doesn't stop there; its developer, Peter Maurer - who Mat Lu pointed out in January has developed a ton of other great Mac apps, has sprinkled all sorts of handy magic throughout yFlicks, from a simple rotate button for movies that were shot with the camera rotated to Smart Folders for organizing your flicks and even one-click access to viewing your movie file in its location in the Finder. In fact, I'm so happy with yFlicks, I'm still buying it straight from Mr. Maurer. If you want to save some cash though, yFlicks is on a 40% sale today at MacZOT: its U.S. price is typically $20, but today-only it's just $11.95. That's a killer deal on one of the best darn movie organizing apps I've ever seen.Of course, before you decide, you can grab a demo from Many Tricks, Peter Maurer's software company, and take it for a spin before throwing down your cash.
KeyCue 35% off at MacZOT today only
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.
Mac Pilot half-off at MacZOT today only
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.
MacZOT offers 30% discount for RapidWeaver
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.
Brian Ball responds to xPad developer's claims
[UPDATE: Moments before I posted this, Brian's post on macZOT mysteriously vanished and he's not responded to my IMs regarding where the post went. So the links to Brian's post below are broken until Brian decides whether he wants his side told in his own words or not.][UPDATE 2: Brian has put a post back up at the links I reference, but he's replaced his original post with a new one indicating he's "over it" now.]Brian Ball has a few things to say about Garrett Murray's "Maniacal Rage," which I posted about earlier this evening.Brian's response appears on macZOT and it's worth reading, word for word, as it is factually accurate to the best of my knowledge and it's always good to hear both sides of a story from the involved parties themselves. And Brian spells my name right, which I always appreciate.The key points in Brian's post are not in dispute. The fact is that the contract between Garrett and Brian was not violated in the strictest sense. Garrett himself admits that and I didn't hide that fact in my post either. It was a dumb dumb dumb dumb dumb thing to have in the contract and Garrett has, I'm sure, learned his lesson.But - and there's always a but - sometimes it's about more than what's technically correct. Sometimes it's about what's "right" in the broader sense. Brian says "There is no wrong action to defend. You simply have to read what was stated and just determine if what happened is really unfair, or if somebody had unmet expectations and went into a Maniacal Rage about it." It's worth noting if you are just tuning in that Garrett's blog is called "Maniacal Rage," lest you think that Brian is overreacting. He continues... "We had every good intention of bringing lots of xPad to the market because we really like the application. But once we decided that really wasn't part of the core strategy we held up our end of the agreement we made. The fact that Garrett is making xPad free confirms the fact that he himself realizes that xPad is not worth further development but is still a very useful application."My take, and this is just my opinion as an uninvolved bystander, is that Brian lost sight of the bigger picture here and he could have handled it a lot better, while still accomplishing the same thing. He'd have come off less like a spoiled kid and more like a professional. I don't know Brian so I can't say he had ill intentions all along, but it comes off that way, whether he meant it to or not and whether he did or not. I would not go as far as many of you did in the comments on the last post, but I still think Brian blew it and his "I stuck to the exact terms of the contract and that's that" attitude really hurts him more than the act itself. Right or not, it's often about perception and not about facts. That's a lesson I have learned and forgotten and relearned many times, so it's close to my heart. Being right is great. Being perceived as being right is better.
xPad developer says macZOT and Brian Ball ripped him off.
Since MacHeist is over, we need a new punching bag in the indie Mac developer arena, right? Last week Mac App a Day crashed and burned in a predictable fiery death. Now macZOT - or at least one of the key players behind macZOT - faces some scrutiny over a licensing deal he made with the original developer of xPad. The gist of it is that - according to Garrett Murray, the aforementioned xPad developer - Brian Ball screwed him out of over $4,000 in a rather unprofessional and weasily way. There's a slight catch, however, in that the way Brian got out of honoring a gentleman's agreement was by using the loophole that Garrett himself put in the contract! Oops.Read Garrett's side of the story in detail on his blog (ahem... before you comment, please?) and decide for yourself whether he got played or not. Despite the very stupid mistake Garrett made by having a loophole in his contract that clearly had so much potential for misuse and disaster, I'm still taking his side on this one. I think Brian played dirty pool and that kind of behavior really shouldn't be rewarded, whether it's technically playing by the rules or not.The end result - no matter whose side you take on this one - is the xPad is now free for all and anyone who paid Garrett for it, since November '06 when it defaulted back to him, is getting a refund. Something tells me Brian also just got added to MacSanta's "naughty" list.UPDATE: My follow-up and comments from Brian can be found in "Ball responds to xPad developer's claims."Thanks Chris and Ryan!
TUAW Podcast #15: The Delicious Cast
Fire up your favorite audio players ladies and gentlemen, for TUAW Podcast #15 is live and ready for consumption. This time around it was Laurie Duncan, Scott McNulty and I, and I'm delighted to say we have dramatically improved our recording setup to give you a much, much better and cleaner listening experience. Leaving iChat + GarageBand in the dust, we opted for Skype and the fantastic Audio Hijack Pro from Rogue Amoeba, and we sound worlds better, if I may say so myself (though to their credit, Apple seems to be the only one who has mastered two-click audio chat recording, complete with separate channels in GarageBand for each participant). Also, Scott and I were both using Blue Snowballs for our mics, and Laurie's is in the mail.Moving right along, we dub this The Delicious Cast because it was more of a chat about this brewing topic of The Delicious Generation, a term borne out of a post Paul Kafasis at Rogue Amoeba wrote concerning recent aspects of the Mac community like macZOT, Disco, My Dream App and MacHeist, as well as their relationship to Mac OS X's seemingly wayward UI and the recent discussion amongst developers at C4. Paul and many others have been philosophizing over what all these things mean for the community and the future of Mac OS X's usability, so the three of us decided to weigh in, podcast style. I just noticed, by the way, that Paul issued a follow-up to his original post, in case you're down for some more reading on the topic.This time around, the podcast weighs in at just over 23MB and 25 minutes. As always, you can grab it via direct link here, our iTunes Store podcast directory or with our dedicated podcast RSS feed. Enjoy, and be sure to drop us some feedback in the comments!
Free Disco for your friends!
But... only if you took advantage of yesterday's macZOT offer! I see as of this morning Disco is still available for $14.95, so maybe the freebie is still valid. Apparently when you register, the surprize (sic) is revealed: another license to give away to a friend. That's a brilliant way to spread the love. If I buy a copy today, I'll update this post if the freebie is still available. Considering Disco's fantastic UI, cool tricks, and excellent implementation, what's going to happen to venerable (and for a while, pretty much standard) Toast? If they don't at least drop the price I'm not sure what advantages it would offer. I'd like to see El Gato build some support for Disco too, boy that'd be cool.Thanks, Timmay.
Disco public beta and today-only macZOT price
Disco, the new burning app with so much buzz, has transitioned from a private beta to a public one. We've covered our fair share of Disco already, but to summarize: it has burning features that place it somewhere in between the Finder and Roxio's $99 Toast 7. One feature I didn't know about before though is Discography, a built-in search engine that lets you search through all the files you've previously burned. Users can search when the file was burned, when it was last edited, and to what disc it was burned - now that's innovation, boys and girls.However, today is the last day Disco can be had for the introductory price of $14.95. While you can purchase at this price straight from Disco's site, macZOT is running one of their zany deals where three lucky buyers will win a Lacie DL DVD Burner with LightScribe, and some sort of a bonus is included with every purchase. You'd better hurry though: as of this writing you have just under 14 hours to hop on the Disco + macZOT bandwagon, and after today, Disco's price rises to $24.95.
Use Mac OS X keyboard and shortcuts on Windows
If you're jonesing for your Mac OS X keyboard shortcuts to work on Windows, or if you just can't give up Apple's keyboard while using Boot Camp, the AppleK Pro keyboard driver for Windows might just be your fix. This little driver allows you to use most Mac OS X shortcuts (such as cmd - shift 3/4 for screenshots and cmd - opt - esc for the Windows Task Manager), and you can even plug in an Apple USB keyboard to keep on truckin' (great for the Boot Camp users in the audience).My big gripe with AppleK Pro however (besides the logo), is its outlandish $25 price. $5 - sure. $10 - I'd consider it (if I had to use Windows, that is). Even $15 might be reasonable, as long as you throw in the answer to the meaning of life or something. But $25 for some keyboard shortcuts? I might as well buy a new keyboard - at least then I could have one of those cool Matrix-style, multi-keyboard setups and act like I can actually see things when I stare at scrolling Klingon-ish code. Maybe these guys should hook up with MacZOT to cut the Mac shortcut addicts a break.
StoryZOT
MacZOT is back with more ambiguity in the form of a special edition triple-Xtreme MysteryZOT they're calling StoryZOT. Three mustery developers talk about their pasts, how they came to write software, and their philosophies on various issues. One application out of each of the developer's software offerings will be included in the StoryZOT bundle, valued at around 70 bucks, but selling for only $6. Until now, no one, not even the over 1000 people who have already shelled out the cash for the package, knew what they were getting. I however, using my stealth, cunning, and l33t hax0r skillz, have been able to pry from an inside source the fact that one of the apps in the bundle will be KIT from Reinvented Software.
MacUpdate copies Woot clone MacZot
I heard somewhere that there are only something like 30 basic movie plots, and all films are just twists and forks of these original few. Some would say that the same is true for e-business, and they would probably be right. MacUpdate.com has announced a new feature in which a featured piece of software will be heavily discounted and available for only 24 hours. If this concept sounds familiar, it's because it is. The massively successful MacZot got the idea from woot.com, and woot probably found the idea somewhere else. Because Mac software is a relatively niche market, I see one of two things happening. Either the competition between sites leads to a bidding war to see who can bring in the most dough for the developers, or one of the sites becomes much more popular than the others. Either way, I think the new feature will benefit us end users in the end. [via Chris Messina]
MacZot and Disco ask you to trust them
MacZot and the guys behind AppZapper are asking all you hard working readers to fork over your cash for a yet-to-be-announced application by the name of Disco. The idea is you get in early at a price way below what the app will eventually cost; and you get access to the private beta.Not much is known about Disco other than a few small screenshots, some hints given on the MacZot page, and some super-seekrit classified info (italicized for your reading pleasure) that I've been able to acquire from an anonymous source. What we know it does:- 3D particle effects- Motion sensing- Sound sensing - At times, the app icon will begin smoking as an indication of certain application activityAccording to my source, a lot of effort has been put into making Disco look really, really good. Although it might sound that Disco is just a lot of fluff, I can assure you that it does serve a real purpose, and does do something useful. I just cant tell you what that something is.
Suggest-A-ZOT
Want a free copy of your favorite Mac app? The crazy kids at macZOT are offering just that if you're the first person to suggest an app you'd like to see on macZOT, and they do cover it. They post a long list of apps that have already been suggested, so you'll have to find something relatively obscure. But hey, there's always something new on ye olde Web 2.0. It looks like you have to download their Suggest-A-ZOT 1.0 software to enter your suggestion.Thanks, Brady.
