Chat Transcript Manager: Memory Loss Be Gone
If you are the type of person who spends a lot of time chatting online, then you probably have plenty of chat transcripts. Chat Transcript Manager from Unsanity is an invaluable application if you need your transcripts to be searchable and organized. It has support for the 3 major Mac instant messaging clients: iChat, Adium and Fire.
Chat Transcript manager’s strongest features are it’s searching and sorting capabilities. You can search all of your iChat, Adium or Fire transcripts right in the main window. The sorting abilities also come in handy, as you can weed out transcripts based on date; whether they happened this week, last month etc. and whether they contain emails, links or pictures.
The Unarchiver: Bom Voyage ArchiveHelper
The Unarchiver is a much more capable replacement for the venerable “BOMArchiveHelper.app”, the built-in archive unpacker program in Mac OS X. The Unarchiver is designed to handle many more formats than OS X by default, and to better fit in with the design of the Finder. It can also handle filenames in foreign character sets, created with foreign language versions of other operating systems.
AppFresh: All-in-One Software Update Replacement
AppFresh is a utility that keeps all applications on your Mac up to date by checking the internet for new releases and making downloading and installing them a breeze. It covers software updates from Apple and third parties and can be used as a replacement for Apple’s own Software Update application to provide one central place to make sure you’re up to date.
Even though all of these features may exude “must-have app,” it’s still very much a work in progress. It’s only a preview for now, not yet in beta. For safety reasons, it won’t overwrite your applications but extract downloaded updates to your desktop. Users have also reported crashes while updating Saft for Safari. Despite these downsides this app looks very promising and may very well become a staple application in the future.
Call Recorder: Cheaper, Easier Skype Recording
If you want to record, for example, a podcast or an important phone call over Skype, you’ve probably looked at either WireTap Pro or Audio Hijack Pro. These apps are great and powerful for much more than just Skype, but if you want absolute simplicity and all you really want to do is record both sides of a Skype conversation, Ecamm’s Call Recorder for Skype, just upgraded to version 2.0, may be the best option for you.
Giveaway: NetNewsWire
There are tons of RSS readers for the Mac. However, most of them ship with basic features and are almost powerless. Introducing NetNewsWire, a powerful and robust RSS reader. NetNewsWire has a familiar three-paned interface, similar to Mail.app, and can fetch and display news from thousands of different websites and weblogs, making it quick and easy to keep up with the latest news. Besides reading articles and news, you can download podcasts and audio files and have them sync to your portable audio device. The app now synchronizes with NewsGator Online and the rest of the NewsGator RSS Suite.
Journler: Jot Your Thoughts Down
Organization of my notes is key, and most word processing apps aren’t built for organization. However, developer Philip Dow decided to change that, and build a word processor surrounded by organization and media integration. Introducing Journler, a daily notebook and entry based information manager. Anyone, of every persuasion can use it on a daily basis to connect their writing with the media most important to them. Journler features iLife integration, audio and video entries, extensive document importing, and instantaneous searching. The app also sports filtering, integration with Mail, iWeb and Address Book, AppleScript, Spotlight, and blogging support.
Logitech Z-10: Touch Your Music A Little Early
Walk into an Apple Retail store and look at the speakers on display. JBL, Soundsticks, Altec Lansing, and similar brands appear on the shelves. However, none of these speakers are truly user-centric. They plug into your computer and that’s it. The speakers fade away and simply become part of your iTunes habits. Since the speakers are a prominent part of the music experience, the user should be able to interact with the speakers as if they were the iTunes control buttons themselves. Logitech has solved this problem with the Z-10 Speakers, a two piece interactive speaker set.
Twitterrific 2.0: Public Beta
And now, the moment you’ve all been waiting for. Introducing Twitterrific 2 Beta! Well, we’re actually waiting for the final release, but the beta is good for now. Twitterrific is the Iconfactory’s take on an easy to use tweet submission utility. You may have seen a few of these out there, but nothing compares to this. Twitterrific’s user interface is streamlined and beautiful to look at, making the app fun and easy to use. The first version of Twitterrific, like any application, had it’s fare share of bugs, most of which have been squashed in small updates. The Iconfactory has now released the beta of Twitterrific 2, a significant update.
Giveaway Winners: dryptAway
Thanks to everyone who entered the dryptAway giveaway contest. For those of you who don’t remember, dryptAway is a helpful OS X security utility valued at $10. Unfortunately, we couldn’t pick everyone, and ended up selecting five winners. The winners are Louis, David, Brian Waldo, Mike, and Mr D.A. Your serials are on their way. To everyone who lost, there are plenty more chances to win free apps and more, so check back frequently 
TuneFlex AUX: The Road to In-Car iPod Bliss
Ever since the iPod became “the next big thing,” people have been looking for more and more ways to use them. With more than 70% of cars produced today having iPod capabilities, it’s clear that people are beginning to use the devices more in their cars than they do with headphones—that’s certainly the case with me. But what if your car isn’t iPod–ready? There are four issues to deal with to make it happen: playing your iPod through your car stereo, keeping your iPod somewhere safe and secure, controlling your iPod without taking your eyes off the road, and keeping the juice flowing to keep your tunes playing. Griffin’s new TuneFlex AUX brings a solution to all four of these problems.
