Ramp Champ takes the classic game of Skee-Ball and puts it on its head. The game play is pretty much as simple as it gets on the iPhone, you simply slide your finger from the bottom of the screen up to roll your ball at the various targets. Out of the box, Ramp Champ includes 4 different styles of Skee-Ball: Clown Town, Breakwater Bay, Space Spin, and the Icon Garden. But using the in-app purchasing you can get two add-ons, both costing $.99 and including 2 new themes as well as various new prizes.

By far the most impressive of Ramp Champ’s features is it’s design. The Iconfactory is known for it’s superb design and this game is no exception.Immediately upon launching the app you become immersed in the carnival atmosphere through the impressive typography and phenomenal use of texture. The user interface is simple and clean but does not stray away from the overall feel, the tab bar the garnishes the bottom of 99% of iPhone apps, for example, is still there in spirit but it’s face is replaced with various carnival style posters. If the design alone doesn’t put you in the midway spirit, the music and sounds will certainly get you there. They are so good, in fact, that I don’t think you should play the game without them.

The gameplay is as addictive as an iPhone game can be. Each individual ramp theme has a separate set of 3 goals, which are surprisingly motivating and I’ve found they actually give you some hint on how you should play the ramp. For every 500 points you receive you get a ticket, just like you would get at a carnival, with these tickets you can get various virtual prizes, including Ollie, the Twitterrific bird. Unfortunately, the game has a tendency to crash occasionally when “printing your tickets” and at some other times during gameplay. I’ve also found that on occasion the ball will get stuck on the dividers between the various levels of targets. Luckily, the ball disappears after a few seconds and the game play resumes. If it weren’t for the crashing and few bugs, this could be the perfect iPhone game.

Overall, I’ve found Iconfactory and DS Media Lab’s Ramp Champ to be absolutely deserving of it’s $1.99 price tag even with the bugs. For more coverage on Ramp Champ be sure to listen to the next episode of the MacApper Podcast, releasing Monday morning.

SweetFM is a mash up of sorts, mixing Last.fm streaming with your average iTunes helper app. Like all other iTunes helper apps, SweetFM displays the album artwork of the song your currently listening to and that functionality also works with music you stream from Last.fm. It also has an indescript spot where you are suppose to enter what you want to listen to on Last.fm and an arbitrary arrow button next to it. One would think you could just enter an artist name into the box and get Last.fm to play it but this is not the case. Instead you have to press this arrow button to display a group of addition buttons labeled “Artist”, “Tags”, and etc. You then have to hit one of those buttons and enter further information into the box. For example, if I wanted to listen to Pink Floyd on Last.fm, I would have to open up SweetFM, click the arrow, click artist, and then enter “Pink Floyd” in the box.

In reality all they are really doing with this convoluted process is adding a little tag behind the information you enter into the box. You would think they could automate this or have a little bit of magic happen behind the scenes, but unfortunately that is not the case.

Aside from that the application feels more like a beta than a final release, I’ve encountered multiple bugs in the few days that I’ve been playing with it. The first of which is that what the application shows as playing and what is actually playing in iTunes don’t match from time to time, even though SweetFM says the right info in it’s menu in the menu bar. Also, the progress indicator, which allows you to scrub through songs, occasionally does not work.

But the most disappointing part of this application is it’s user interface. Even though they are touting the fact that you can design skins for this app using HTML and CSS, a well built one should still come bundled with the app. Fibre, the included skin, is an overly glossy, distracting waste of desktop space. Personally, I like my iTunes helpers to be pinned to the desktop and just meld with everything else their but Fibre is just not capable of doing that (the melding at least). Silly things like having the horizontal volume slider bumped right up to the “Scrobbling” button for Last.fm makes it seem as though the slider has something to do with “Scrobbling” when in fact it does not. The semi-transparent background in particular is my least favorite part, why does it need to be there? Take a page from the designers doing skins for Bowtie and just get rid of the app background all together, it works so much better with the desktop. Luckily choco moko has a skins directory on their website but at the moment it only has one additional theme, which seems only like a slight redesign to Fibre and nothing more.

If your at all interested in helper apps for iTunes, I would recommend you stay away from SweetFM. Although if your a fan of Last.fm it is worth checking out. It is available from choco moko for $29. If you are just looking for an iTunes helper, check out the free Bowtie.

The long awaited update to the iPhone OS is coming tomorrow, June 17th, and it looks as though Apple is very much prepared.

Find My iPhone, a feature allowing you to find your iPhone via MobileMe if you were to lose it, has been available online for developers who are already running OS 3.0 since the announcement, last week.

But just a few moments ago, I noticed something in the App Store which I’m pretty sure wasn’t there before. Apple is now listing “iPhone OS 3.0 Tested” next to the version number of what seems to be all new applications. This message also appears next to all updates as well, further proving that Apple is making sure most of the applications available to consumers will work on the new OS.

Be sure to check back later this week for further coverage on iPhone OS 3.0 and the iPhone 3GS.

Hulu Desktop brings the best of Hulu.com while adding an intuitive albeit somewhat confusing user interface, but after playing with the app for a little while it all makes sense. Upon opening the application, the video you were previously watching begins to play and you are given the options: Start Watching, Menu, and Switch Profile.

Diving into the menu system, you are given options for looking at Popular and Recently Added videos as well as TV, Movies and even Search. In actuality, the navigational system is very similar to that of it’s web version except it is all “live” and you don’t have to worry about pages loading or having to stop watching your video to find something else. The menu is easily accessible at all times by simply hitting the ESC button on your keyboard or by hitting the Menu button on your Apple Remote.

While watching a video, you are given a very familiar bar indicating your current position in the video but it has one very helpful feature that its web counterpart does not have. When putting your mouse over the timeline you are given a picture of what is at that position, something that is handy when looking for a particular part of a video. When you click on the video and pause it, a menu pops up on the left hand side giving you the feature that Hulu.com has, like Closed Captioning, Ratings, and etc. In that menu you will also find a help section which gives you all the keyboard and Apple Remote shortcuts, allowing you to watching your favorite videos without the aid of your mouse.

Overall, Hulu Desktop is an intuitive copy of its web-based brother, Hulu.com. The only real additions simply come from the app no longer being in your browser, things like not having to wait for pages to load and being able to have the video continue to play while you search the bowels of the menu system. So if you are an avid TV viewer and frequent Hulu.com regularly or just want the convenience of a desktop app, you can pick up Hulu Desktop for Windows and Mac at Hulu.com/Labs.

Beats includes a BPM (beats per minute) calculator, in which you simply press a big button to the beat of a song and Beats will return the BPM of what you were tapping. Also included is an advanced metronome which acts like some of the more expensive. The last and most innovative feature is a key mixing aid that will help you find keys that harmonically match with the record, this can be real helpful if your into producing “mashups” of various songs.

This app is in no way targeted to the average consumer but a fairly large niche, much like one of their other apps Darkness (which I reviewed late last week). But unlike Darkness, I feel as though Beats features would easily make this application worthy of the download, if you are in the music industry.

Also, if you are into the whole UI design process or just like things that look cool, Bjango mentioned on their twitter account that they, “saved a picture of the Beats UI every 5-10mins while it [Beats] was being designed”. So I would keep my eyes peeled on the Bjango web site and/or twitter account for a nifty time-lapse.

Beats is available now on the iTunes Store for $1.99.

UPDATE: The video is now available.

Darkness specializes in all things dark and light. It comes pre-loaded with various locations across the planet and it finds yours via GPS, ifyour not using an iPhone you also have the ability to put in location via city name.  These locations are all visible on the app’s main screen, along side them are the sun’s current position in the sky, current local time, as well as the time of sunrise and sunset. If you press the calendar icon in the upper right corner you are also given the ability to look at the information of days in the past and in the future. All of this information is given to you in a clean, intuitive list which allows you to drill down further when you select a specific city.

Upon selecting a city, you are present with even more information and a map of the world with a flag marking that city’s location. Information such as the time noon will occur at, moonrise, moonset, and the various azimuths are all at your fingertips. Bjango did a great job of allowing you to recognize this information without even having to read because the icons are so well done. Like on the main screen, you still have the ability to look at the number of days past and future.

Also listed on the main screen is the moon, with an icon displaying the current phase, clicking on this allows you to see exactly what day and time each phase will occur on as well as fun statistics like Percentage Illuminated and Distance from Earth.

Overall, Darkness is an incredibly well designed application, that is available on iTunes for $1.99 but it has a very limited appeal. Had it not been for a giveaway Bjango was doing on Twitter, I probably would have never set my fingers upon this application. It is a great tool to have if your a photographer, as it allows you to get the best possible natural light and see exactly what time sunrises and sunsets are happening. But aside from that, I see no real use for this application unless you simply like to look up at the sky.

The install process of Safari 4 was smooth with the only hiccups being the requirement of the latest security update and the Windows-esque reboot at finish. Upon first opening the app you are greeted with a very Apple looking ‘video’, which according to the Twitterverse, was done almost entirely using CSS and images. Once completed, you are dumped onto the new ‘Top Sites’ feature, it is a very Matrix looking method of looking at the sites you visit most, with screenshots of each individual site. This page is also very configurable, allowing you to remove certain sites, pin others, and change the size of the screenshots.

Tip: To make ‘Top Sites’ your home page, just type ‘topsites://’ into the Home Page field of Preferences.

Using the new Nitro javascript engine, Apple claims Safari is now 6 times faster at executing javascript when compared to Internet Explorer 8 and 4 times faster than Firefox 3.1. In the column of functionality, Safari now has a pretty extensive search assist feature. When typing into the search field you are now presented with 10 suggested searches and 10 of your most recent searches. In my testing, Safari did a superb job of judging exactly what I was going to search for and did it at an impressively high speed. A feature similar to this is also now a part of the address bar. The history page now features Cover Flow, not a huge new feature, but it does come in handy when skimming for a certain page.

This update to Safari is also chock full of user interface tweaks, the first and most recognizable being the new location of tabs. Previously, the tabs for the various sites you currently were surfing was beneath your address bar but not anymore. Now the tabs are located at the very top of the window, in line with the close window buttons. The tabs also pack a feature that was perviously missing, the ability to pull off into a separate window. Simply pull the tab down and away from the other tabs and it will open into it’s own window (present in Safari 3). Personally, I am a big fan of the move as it adds a bit of vertical screen real estate but it comes with one big flaw. In order to reorder your tabs, you have to click on the far right corner or else it moves the entire window. I understand completely why it is like this, but it is a bit annoying.

Little UI tweaks are also visible when looking at drop downs, such as the search suggestions. These now have more rounded corners and just feel a bit cleaner than before. It is also worth noting that in this current beta, the progress bar that once was a part of the address bar has been replaced by a simple spinner.

In conclusion, I think that the Safari 4 beta is most definitely worthy of an install and it has currently overthrown Firefox as my default browser. It’s fast, clean, has that Apple polish that we all have grown to love.

At the first launch of Starplayr, you are prompted to fill in your XM or Sirius login information and asked whether or not you would like to use a higher quality bitrate (64kbps) when using wifi, the default bitrate is 32kbps.

After logging in, you are presented with the elegantly simplistic GUI, which put simply is a list with logos for each available station. You are also given the ability to sort the stations by genre which proves to be very helpful as the station titles are not normally too helpful.

Tip: From the station listing you can press and hold on a station and it will be added to your list of presets.

Once you select a station, StarPlayr buffers for a couple seconds and your audio stream begins. Starplayr than displays the track and artist name as well the album artwork. It also offers the ability to look at the lyrics of the song, mute the stream and it even gives you links to download the song from iTunes or Amazon.

After using this preview for weeks, I have only experienced one issue and it was merely an incorrect song title. The user interface works flawlessly and I am consistently able to connect to the audio streams, both through cellular and WiFi.

NiceMac states on their website that StarPlayr has been submitted to the App Store and could be available any day now. I highly recommend you keep your eyes open for it.

Disclosure: One of our contributors, Joe Turner, is a part of the StarPlayr development team but this review has been done independently of him.

The user interface of The Hit List reflects that of yellow ruled notebook paper with various tabs allowing you to access different to-do lists. It also features a navigational bar on the left hand side of the window very much like other GTD (Getting Things Done) apps. This bar allows you to set up some data structure through various folders, smart folders, and lists. Unlike typical GTD apps, The Hit List’s method of doing things is much different.

Most GTD applications force you do get into the program and with a series of clicks enter your tasks. The Hit List does this in a different and much easier fashion. Instead of forcing the user to spend extra time clicking around adding tags, priorities and et cetra, it allows you to do all the same without your fingers leaving the keyboard. All you need to do is hit ‘return’ when within a list to add a task, once the task is entered you can insert a tag by placing a ‘/’ in front of the tag name or a context by replacing the slash with ‘@’. Personally, I have found this method of adding tasks much easier, allowing me to spend more time on the tasks at hand, although if you are a GUI person this could be a problem.

Aside from The Hit List’s keyboard centric nature, it also allows you to time how long it takes you to complete a task and then log the time as part of the tasks data. Additionally, whenever you complete a task The Hit List plays a noise, which as corny as it may sound, is surprisingly satisfying.

The only thing that worries me about this application is its lack of an iPhone companion application. In the preferences pane of the application, however, they state, “Please rest assured that we’re already working on the iPhone version of The Hit List that will sync with the desktop version”.

The Hit List is currently in beta but is available for pre-order at a discounted rate of $49.95 via the purchase menu in The Hit List. Once the application leaves beta, the price will jump to $69.95. Stay tuned for an interview with the developer. If you have any questions to ask, please post them in the comments.

Pages, the word processor of the bunch, gained features such as full screen, outline view, as well as more templates. Apple has also made it easier for it’s scientific crowd to add in equations from MathType and bibliographies from Endnote. The developers also noticed that many users were taking graphs and tables from Numbers and placing them into documents, so they streamlined the process and now the entire iWork suite of apps work very well together.

Numbers, like Pages, got a handful of new templates as well as a whole slew of functions which previously did not exsist within it’s formula library. It also allows users to create more advanced charts and give tables categories.

Lastly, Keynote now allows you to control your presentations via an iPhone or iPod Touch. As well as adding “Magic Move” objects and chart animations, among many other things.

Perhaps the most impressive feature of the new iWork is iWork.com. iWork.com adds collaboration to the entire suite of products and is built directly into all of them. So with the click of a button, you can upload a document you are working on and allow your co-workers to download it as well as make comments to it.

Initially, I am very impressed with the new features that Apple has brought to the table here. The install process of iWork ’09 took a mere 2 minutes and all the apps seem to run silky smooth. Pages’ full screen mode works just as billed and actually gives you a current word count and the ability to access the toolbar by simply sticking your mouse at the top of the screen. The iWork.com collaboration works very well with the only exception being that I get an error when trying to send an invite to other users. As it stands, iWork looks like it lives up to the hype but only a week’s worth of use will tell if this is truly the case.

I have only scratched the surface with the new verison of iWork, so keep your eyes open for a full review in the coming week.

Unfortunately, I feel as though this application falls flat and only really offers the same features as its free counterparts. Like the AOL Radio application, Radioshift allows you to find all your local radio stations and search for others using an intuitive list of music genres. But unlike the AOL app, Radioshift also allows you to search for your favorite station by name.

As for quality, Radioshift works very well on 3G, Edge, and WiFi. Obviously a stream’s quality varies based upon the bitrate at which it broadcasts, so it would be very helpful if Rouge Amoeba listed that in the station’s description.

I have no doubt that this is a very well-built radio application for your iPhone, I just find it hard to recommend that you go out and spend $9.95 for this app when you could get one of many other radio apps which have the nearly the same functionality for free.

Currently Radioshift Touch is available through the App Store for $9.99.

So if you are looking for more free gifts to open on Christmas Day, be sure to check out the Mac Giving Tree.

This app, like many others in the App Store today, allows you to search for any product and even purchase it from Amazon.com right from your iPhone. The feature that makes this application a complete killer though is known as “Amazon Remembers”. You simply select “Remembers” from the bottom of the screen and snap a photo of any item you would like Amazon to remember for you. This photo then gets uploaded to Amazon, where the real magic happens. They take advantage of their service known as “mechanical turk”, which is literally a human powered search service, in this case. With this service a real human looks at your photograph and identifies exactly what you took the photograph of with surprising accuracy. Amazon stipulates that this process can take anywhere from 1 minute to 24 hours, but personally I only ever had to wait 5 minutes, at the longest.

I put the Amazon application up against another app, SnapTell Explorer, which uses a more algorithmic approach to identifying the target object. For this face-off, I snapped a photo of the front of my Nikon D80 camera (with the D80 and Nikon clearly visible), the spine of the OS X Leopard box, and the front cover of I am Legend. The I am Legend cover was easily identified by both applications but the D80 and the OS X box were only identified by Amazon. SnapTell Explorer turned around nearly instantaneously with a response, whereas Amazon took a minute or two.

After returning the identified object, the Amazon Mobile app allows you to compare prices, look at reviews, and even purchase the item from your phone. It even saves this information to your account so that when you log in to Amazon on your Mac it will be displayed on your homepage for further review or purchase.

Currently the Amazon Mobile app is listed for free on the App Store.

Seadragon is a project which is part of the Microsoft Live Labs, an experimental application warehouse of sorts. The idea behind Seadragon is to allow you to “infinitely zoom” on giga-pixel sized images. The application was originally developed on Microsoft’s Silverlight for the PC platform but the people over at the Live Labs have adapted it for the iPhone and iPod Touch.

Right out of the box Microsoft includes several example images and sets for you to play around in. They include a 1898 artist’s rendering of Milwaukee, aerial images of the United States, NASA’s Blue Marble, and many others. Microsoft also allows you to add your own “Deep Zoom Content” and content done by Photosynth users. When choosing a set instead of an individual image, you can hit the play button at the bottom of the screen to allow you to look at the set’s images individually.

Seadragon was obviously developed for the iPhone because of the multi-touch “pinch” zooming capabilities as the multi-touch allows you to navigate through the image very easily. When zooming, you are basically transitioning through images, and this transition is very smooth but occasionally takes a fair about of time (~10 seconds). If you ever try running it online, the transition is much quicker, with a noticeable load time rarely happening.

The application is very impressive at first use, but after using it a few times the “novelty” wears off. Microsoft offers an application Deep Zoom Composer, which is only available for the PC and PhotoZoom, which is an online app but is very lacking. If Microsoft was to offer software for us Mac users, this app would be much more useful.

Microsoft has the Seadragon app listed on the iTunes App Store for free.

What a better way to get your iPhone or Touch video then through a free streaming application. This app is know as Joost and it comes from the guys at Joost.com. Joost is one of the heavy hitters in the world of online video, alongside greats such as Hulu and Youtube. They feature content from Comedy Central, CNN, Adult Swim, and claim to have over 46,000 TV shows.

The interface is very simple, with only “Joost Picks”, Popular, Browse, Search, and More located at the bottom. The Browse panel is fairly intuitive, but only focuses on the category of video; it doesn’t get down to the nitty gritty of allowing you to sort by TV series or even channel. On the other hand, the Search panel is very accurate, but often turns up some videos you may not be looking for. Videos themselves load up in a few seconds, but the magic lies in the fact that, in all the videos I tested, not once did they stop due to buffering, something that the YouTube app rarely achieves. The quality of the videos themselves is also very impressive, with only the slightest of compression artifacts noticeable in high-motion scenes.

Video quality and selection was top notch, but I found fast-forwarding and rewinding the videos very difficult, and sometimes I couldn’t even accomplish that. The most unfortunate problem with this application is that it only works on WiFi. Reading through Joost’s app launch post, I did see that they are working on possibly running off the 3G network, although I would think buffering would be much more visible.

All in all this is a top-notch app that rivals the YouTube app, and even trumps it in terms of content. Currently, the Joost app is available for free on the iTunes App Store and I would highly recommend you seek it out.

Camerabag is an application from an unlikely developer, Nevercenter, whose claim to fame is actually a 3D modeling application. Camerabag itself is a relatively simple application. It is very obvious that they are focused on your photos and not a “delicious” interface, which I find pleasing. Camerabag allows you to take a photograph and apply one of several effects. The effects revolve around styles of older cameras, such as Holga and Lolo, as well as photographers like Ansel Adams.

To apply these effects you merely import the photo into the application and swipe through the various effects and save the ones that you like.

Nevercenter is constantly adding new effects and tweaking the ones that are currently included. In the time I have been using it (about a month), they have added an Instant (polaroid) effect and tweaked the Infrared effect.

Camerabag also allows you to take photographs from within the application but if you do not tell it to save the photo with any of the effects it will not be saved at all. Unfortunetly, due to its heavy reliance upon the camera Camerabag is not very useful on the iPod Touch. But if you do store photos on your Touch, Camerabag is capable of modifying them.

Currently Camerabag is listed on the iTunes App Store for $2.99 here (iTunes link).

The fellows at Spoonjuice saw this problem and created a clean astheticly pleasing solution. The app is know as Night Stand and it serves its purpose surprisingly well.

Put simply all Night Stand does is display current hour, minute, day and optionally second. But the unique and most important part is that you are able to keep the iPhone from going to “sleep” or shutting off the screen. This proves to be incredibly useful when in a dock on, ironically enough, your night stand. This way you can use the iPhone’s alarm capabilities and still be able to roll over in bed and see the current time. Other functionality includes the ability to change the clock’s color and rotate the screen from vertical to horizontal using the accelerometer.

With running the iPhone without “sleep” has it’s disadvantages though. It will drain your iPhone much quicker then regular use, so I would only recommend using it when the iPhone is plugged in. Keeping your screen on for prolonged periods of time will degrade your backlight and screen much faster and to slow this I would recommend lowering your backlight brightness.

Aside for the short list of problems, which aren’t necessarily the apps fault, I would definitely recommend getting this app. Currently it is listed for free on the App Store (iTunes link).

This widget is chock full of features and they are all presented in a very aesthetically pleasing manner. For starters, once the widget is installed it allows you to pick your favorite team and then places their helmet in the lower corner and proceeds to make all games with that team playing in bold. Aside from being pleasing to the eye, the Football widget also serves its purpose, and it does it well.

The Football Widget is divided into two separate “pages”, Scoreboard and Standings. The Scoreboard page is divided into the weeks of the football season with each game listed per week. The list also includes the time and date at which the game will be played. Mousing over individual games displays a pop-up with the score divided into points scored per quarter and the “Game Leaders”. This section of the widget is updated every minute during a game day, which allows you to get work done while still keeping track of your favorite team.

Football Widget’s other page is the Standings. This page divides the league into its specific sections. It lists the Wins, Losses and Ties for each team all in hierarchical order. It serves its purpose but is no where near as exciting as the Scoreboard page.

Did I mention that this widget is totally free? So if your a football fan whether it be at the college or professional level, be sure to download The Football Widget created by Andreas Amann. Also you can check out the baseball widget which is nearly identical but built specifically for baseball.

The results are in. RavenCub, Toni, and Chris A are the lucky winners and have each one a free license for LifeShaker. You all should be receiving an email from the developers at FunkyCloud shortly. Stay tuned as usual for more great reviews and giveaways, and be sure to subscribe to our feed so you don’t miss out!

The application allows you to create goals and steps that must be completed for that goal to be accomplished. These goals are then divided into categories that are each given their own customizable color.

LifeShaker displays a random nine goals in a 3×3 grid which can be shaken up at any time to allow other goals to float to the top, thus becoming viewable. Shaking it up by clicking the cocktail shaker located on the right sidebar. If you have a goal or two that is top priority, you can star them to denote their significance.

LifeShaker can also note that some tasks need to be put on the back burner. This is easily accomplished by dragging the task from the grid to the fire icon, thereby temporarily removing from the grid and allowing that space to be fill by a goal that is more important. Once a task is completed, drag it to the check mark where it will be removed from the grid but will still remain in your master goal sheet.

In the few days that I have been using LifeShaker extensively and I really believe my productivity has increased. If you’re in need of a helpful and fun app to add to your dock, definetely seek out Lifeshaker and take advantage of the 14 day trial. If you decide that you like the app, a full version is available for $29.

BUT WAIT! It gets better! The guys at Funky Cloud have given us 3 licenses to offer up to our loyal readers.

The catch is (there is always a catch), you must answer this question in the comments below:

What features would you like to see in the next version of LifeShaker?

The winners will be announced Wednesday, so put your ideas in the comments before Tuesday at 5PM EDT. Good Luck!

The Jing Project is built around the idea of capturing screenshots or recording video of your desktop and allowing you to upload them to screencast.com. Once on screencast.com you are able to share your video or image with friends, colleagues, or readers. Best of all this entire process is free.

Check out the following video review to see exactly how this whole Jing thing works.

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AirMoose is built to constantly scan the air around your Mac and report the available wireless access points. The scan rate can be set anywhere from every .1 seconds to every 10 seconds depending on how you would like to use it. It doesn’t stop there, it also gives you a signal strength, MAC address, noise level, and even whether or not the access point is secure.

The “Flying Moose” also gives you the ability to log all the access points it comes across and save them into an AML file which can then be opened at a later time.

AirMoose really shines in the aspect of auto-connecting to wireless access points that are not secure (NOTE: We do not condone the theft of bandwidth or hacking by connecting to unsecured wireless networks). This could really come in handy if your driving around and looking to keep a somewhat consistent internet connection.

Also, this application is relatively new and the developer seems to updating it frequently, with that said, I didn’t find any bugs. Recent additions to the application include Growl notifications of when ever a new access point is found as well as the use of the OS X sounds Glass and Submarine.

AirMoose is available for download at Google Code and is developed by David Kerry. So if your constantly on the move and looking for a way to manage your wireless Internet more intuitively definitely check out AirMoose.

To be in the draw, readers needed to comment on how SmartBackup would fit into their backup routine. After a random selection from all eligible comments, we now have our winners. Follow the jump to see if you won.

Gimp and jwylies are our winners! Your information has been sent to the developers, and soon freeridecoding will hook you up with your shiny new licenses. Thanks to everyone for your comments and if you weren’t lucky enough to with this giveaway subscribe to our feed so you don’t miss out next time.

This application is extremely simple and surprisingly powerful. SmartBackup allows you to choose the location of your backup, whether it be an external hard drive, iPod, or a handful of other devices.

Once you have your archive location selected, you go about choosing the files you would like to backup. This is where SmartBackup shines, by pressing the ‘+’ you are given a dialog box where you choose your specific files/folders. This file or folder then appears in the queue and you may change its mode to disable or exclude it if you do not wish to archive it during this sync. SmartBackup also knows where all of your iLife files are located as well as your Mail, Widgets, and Keychains. Having a feature such as this comes in very handy because sometimes OS X places your files in obscure locations.

The speed of this application was very surprising to me. I picked a roughly 7 Gb folder filled with a ton of photos and I choose to have it archive to my external hard drive. The whole process took a slim 10 minutes and couldn’t have gone smoother.

Restore is built into SmartBackup as well again it is very simple to use. All you need to do is choose the location of your backups in the “Backup to:” dialog box and then choose Start Restore under the Restore menu. SmartBackup then scans your Mac and determines what you need replaced. One thing you should know though, is that this applications does not do a full boot-able or “clone” of your drive. This is not what the app was developed for. If you find yourself having a core set of irreplaceable files you want to be safe, you can use SmartBackup to keep them updated on your iPod, network share, external HD etc.

So if your looking for an alternative to your standard backup application check out the trial of SmartBackup from freeridecoding and if you like what you see consider the full version for 15 EUR or $20.77.

Update: Freeridecoding has agreed to give away 2 licneses of SmartBackup to you, the readers! To be eligible, all you need to do is comment on how you could bring SmartBackup into your backup routine. Any other feedback is also greatly appreciated!

Maquarium is chock full of features built to keep the novice and even expert fish keepers at ease.

When you first open up the application it asks you for the tank's name, size, type, and your preferred chemical levels. Once you click OK you are immersed in a very simplistic yet functional interface, which is complete with all the buttons you will need while using the application.

From there you have the freedom to create an organized library of the fish, plants, invertebrates, and coral that are housed with in your aquarium. The most interesting and powerful feature within Maquarium is its database of fish. All you need to do is enter the common name or the scientific name and click search. The application will look though its database and find what you are looking for and fill out the entire profile for that fish with accurate information.

Besides the livestock library feature, the single most useful feature is the conditions table. This lets you keep track of every aspect of your aquarium's chemistry as well as look at trends that develop in your chemistry in the graph view.

Maquarium also includes an expenses and a notes section where you can keep track of all of your aquarium expenditures and leave notes for your self regarding the aquarium. In addition, Macquarium includes a schedule and a handful of useful calculators to round out this very useful tool for tank afishionados.

Plus Maquarium is built from the ground up in Cocoa, and so supports numerous OS X technologies such as animation, sheets, contextual menus, and help tips. It also has support for the X-10 framework for home automation which is accomplished through AppleScript.

So if you are a fish enthusiast, I definitely recommend that you give the free trial a go or pick up the full version of Maquarium for $24.