Congratulations to our winners! You will be receiving an email shortly with your license information. For all of you who didn’t pick up any swag this time around, you can always buy a copy of HoudahSpot for $24.44 (single-user license), or if you are a student you can get away with this wonderful app for $13.04! You can also download a free demo from the site if you want to try it out before buying.

As if being a great app isn’t enough, you’ve got a chance to win a free license for HoudaSpot! Read to the end to learn how.

HoudahSpot is, at it’s most basic, an extension of Spotlight — it finds files. HoudahSpot lets you build queries to find that exact file you need or lost files you had forgotten about. The simplest way to use HoudahSpot is to just type in a query into the text box and press the little green arrow at the top of the window. HoudahSpot quickly kicks it into high gear and it comes back with all the files that match your criteria.

You can change your search query on the fly (as long as the green arrow isn’t showing) and it will dynamically change the results to match. Exclusions, Limits, Location — there are plenty of attributes to choose from to find the exact file you are looking for. If you can’t find the file with this app, it’s not on your Mac. You can even search for invisible files.

When you install HoudahSpot an icon is also added to your menu bar with a menu that, among other things, allows you to do what is called a “blitz search.” This blitz search is like HoudahSpot on crack; it automatically does a search of whatever you type in with the following attributes: “Name contains [search query]” and “Text content contains fuzzy [search query]“. If you just want to search and don’t care about messing with the attributes of the query too much then this is perfect. As you can also see from the screenshot above, there are shortcut menu items to search different places automatically — just click the item you want and it populates the query document with the correct attributes.

Pierre, from Houdah Software, has graciously agreed to give away 5 licenses for this wonderful app, so you guys know what that means! Download the demo and then answer the following question:

What new feature would you like to see in the next release of HoudahSpot?

Have your answer in by 4PM EST on March 25th, 2008, and, as always, the winners will be announced shortly after that.

This review barely scratches the surface of HoudahSpot. I suggest if you want to go more in-depth with this product (which is a great idea!) then pick up a copy of from Houdah Software for $24.44 (single-user license), or if you are a student you can get away with this wonderful app for $13.04! You can also download a free demo from the site if you want to try it out before buying.

What is an Easter mEgg Hunt? According to the website, the “Easter mEgg Hunt is your chance to learn about wonderful Mac software and earn great discounts.” Houdah provides you with a basket and sends you on your merry way across the internets to find eggs on Mac software vendors’ sites. Once you find an egg, click on it and you will be awarded with a 20% off coupon. But don’t stop with one egg, there are more eggs hidden all over the site with more discounts!

You have from today (March 10, 2008) until March 31, 2008, and coupons found will be good until April 6, 2008. You can read more about the hunt at the official site.

Here are some interesting tidbits from the Press Release:

Select Mac indie developers have joined forced to offer Mac users some seasonal fun as well as the opportunity to earn discounts on quality Mac software. The Easter mEgg Hunt will lead visitors to Mac software vendor site to find eggs. Eggs hold coupon codes for a 20% discount at other vendors’ sites. These sites also hide eggs…

Each egg contains a coupon code valid for a 20% discount at 3 participating stores. The same coupon is hidden in 3 eggs placed on 3 different sites.

While on the hunt, visitors get a chance to explore product sites and may there learn about Mac software for which they are about to earn discounts.

How many eggs are there?
Well we won’t spoil the pleasure of hunting by telling you.

Who are the participants?
Another surprise too good to spoil. There are quite a few exciting products to discover. We’ll publish a complete list of participants at the end of the promotion.

Happy hunting!

HoudahGEO is a picture geo-coding app that lets you upload manually (and automatically) geo-coded pictures to either Googe Earth or Flickr for viewing on maps.

Here’s the list of people who won:

• molle
• maxim
• J Dott
• Jim
• Andy

Congratulations to all of you! Information about your licenses will be arriving in your inbox soon so keep an eye out. If you arrived too late or weren’t chosen for one of these licenses you can always pick up your own copy of HoudahGEO for US$39.89 or, if you are a student, Houdah will let you walk away with this great app for the discounted price of US$20.71.

To recap, Galder tasks the player with aligning gems to release the forces to weave a powerful Galder. MacApper would like to congratulate the following lucky winners.

If you are thinking of entering in the future, be sure to enter a valid email address (those who have emails that bounce are disqualified).

• Chriswan Winata
• Carlos
• dsheets
• Anastasia
• Silla

You should receive your license information soon. If you didn’t win or got here too late to get in on the action, you can always get Galder from Fastforward Software for US$19.99.

*Editor: At the end of this review is a chance to win 1 of 5 HoudahGEO licenses. Read on!

HoudahGEO is an application that lets you encode geocoded information (latitude and longitude) into your picture so that mapping apps like Flickr and Google Earth can place them correctly. To do this HoudahGEO lets you upload your pictures, gives you the option of how you wish to encode the information, and finally allows you to export these photos with EXIF/XMP tags and save them to your Mac or to upload them to either Google Earth or Flickr.

It’s really a quite simple process and only takes a minute to do each picture (or a batch if they are all in the same location). After choosing your picture(s) from either your library or from a folder you have the choice of how you wish to encode your pictures — you can import data straight from a GPS or a file, pinpoint your picture’s location on a Google Map, or (my favorite) use Google Earth to pinpoint the location.

Once you’ve coded the location you have another choice — where do you want to upload the pictures, or do you want to upload them at all? I opted with uploading them to Flickr as it has a map that everyone can see of all the geocoded pictures on Flickr (If you are going to use Flickr you will have to first give it permission to upload these pictures to your Flickr account. Make sure that “Hide your photos’ EXIF data” is set to “No” and “Import EXIF location data” is set to “Yes”, and then when you choose to upload to Flickr in HoudahGEO press the “Clear Credentials” button and when you press OK it should open Flickr in a browser window and ask you if you want to allow that photo with EXIF data to be uploaded.)

Until I saw HoudahGEO I didn’t think anything of geocoding photos but now I’m doing it to any pictures that I take, and sometimes I’m just taking pictures so I can geocode them.

Freebie time! Pierre, from Houdah Software, has graciously given us 5 licenses to giveaway so that others can enjoy HoudahGEO just as much as I have so here’s what we are going to do! To be entered into the giveaway, download a trial of HoudahGEO then:

Tell us what you think would make HoudahGEO better.

or

Tell us how you would use HoudahGEO.

The contest starts now and ends February 15, 2007, at Midnight EST, so leave your comments now and get entered to win this wonderful app.

In case you missed this giveaway, HoudahGEO is created by Pierre Bernard and distributed by Houdah Software as shareware. You can purchase a single user license for US$40.27; if you are a student you can buy the license at a discounted price of US$20.90.

But, as with all of our contests there is a catch. It’s not too hard, though, just download a trial of Galder; don’t worry, you will be hooked the moment you try it. It really is good stuff. Second, answer one or all of these questions…

• What do you like/hate about Galder?
• What is your high score?

Leave us a comment with your answer before February 14, 2007, at Midnight (EST); winners will be announced shortly afterward. Good luck gamers!

If you’re late to this party, you can always pick up a copy from Fastforward Software yourself for US$19.99, and see what all the fuss was about.

Gem games are a dime a dozen now and I’m sure most of you are thinking, “What exactly could you do to make a gem game any different that the gem dropping, color matching games of the past?”

You add more strategy! Well that’s what Fastforward Software did, and it turned out to be the right addition to a genre that is overflowing with these titles. Galder, according to Fastforward Software, is a powerful Norse spell that was chanted or etched onto a surface. You, as the player, have been given the task of aligning gems to release the forces to weave a powerful Galder!

The Galder playing board is different from your typical gem matcher, instead of a drop-down rectangular board like most others the board is set up in sectioned, concentric circles. You’ll notice at first glance that there is a thicker line running from the middle all the way up to the top of the main circle, and that the outside edge is thicker than the rest of the board. The moving pointer in the middle is how you will choose your gems to match.

True, the objective is to match gems but, unlike most others, it is not to clear the board of gems; the primary objective is to get the high score, clearing the board merely gives you more points but isn’t required. Getting a high score doesn’t depend so much on how many gems you match and link together but how spread out those matched gems are.

To get the highest score possible you will also have to collapse and pack the gems to get the best spread, but you will have to be strategic about where you collapse and pack; you could just put yourself in a worse mess than you were before. Galder also sports network play where you can play against a friend with two game types — Taking Turns and Haste.

In Taking Turns you and your friend play against each other, taking turns matching gems on the same board; get the highest score and you win. If you like play a little faster-paced give Haste a try. In this variant you and your friend both play a board and the winner is whoever clears their board first. Of course, there is a penalty for not clearing your board so be careful with your gems.

Also, once you register, you can use your username and password to have your high scores uploaded to the game’s online highscore ladder. This is optional and can be turned off in the preferences as well. So if you’re looking for a game that will make you think and not just match a couple of colored gems, then I definitely recommend Galder for it’s ingenious gameplay mechanics and strategy.

My high score so far is 29746; what about you? Galder, created by Ivan Miles and published by Fastforward Software, is shareware. You can try it out from Fastforward Software’s website. The trial lasts for 60 minutes, after which you will have to buy a license for $19.99 USD.