So I'm sure many of you by now have noticed the new advertisements on this blog, replacing the Google AdSense ads I had previously. I know a lot of you are curious as to how well Google ads can perform, or maybe are just curious why I made the switch, so I thought I might share my (brief) personal experience with Adsense with you.

Basically, if you're not familiar as to how they work, Google AdSense in a nutshell is a service for webmasters to easily hook up with advertisers. You apply for the program, and once you're in, you stick in a bit of code and Google sends out a spider, figures out what's on your page, and serves you a relevant text (or image) ad as best as it can. There's a lot more to it, but I won't go into details. I recommend this page for more details.

In the past, web advertising has been a difficult thing for the vast majority of webmasters, bloggers, etc. to set up. Unless you had connections with potential advertisers, you were stuck with no ad revenue, or forced to use an ad service that would place totally irrelevant (and obnoxious) ads on your site. Google AdSense fixes a lot of these problems, hookng up literally millions of advertisers with content creators. It's sort of like how Ebay hooks up sellers and buyers, but with near total automation. Continue reading...

The Fake Leopard Screenshot Contest is off on a spectacular start, thanks to an incredible amount of publicity from the Macintosh media and an equally incredible amount of generosity from sponsors.

As you know, the bounty on the winning fakes was valued at just under $900 per winner. Today, I'm pleased to announce that with the addition of 7 new sponsors, the bounty has now been pushed to well over $1000. Thanks to the following developers for adding their software to the list:

• EarthDesk ($12.95), Xeric Design, Inc
• Mountain Tanks ($14), Battery Acid Games
• Speed Download ($25), Yazsoft
• Pixadex ($18.95) and CandyBar ($12.95), Panic & The Iconfactory
• DockStar ($8), Ecamm Network
• Painter's Picker ($15.85), Old Jewel Software
• iFinance ($15), Synium Software
• Wallet ($14.95), Waterfall Software

Hopefully this boost to the prize package will get even more of you entering. I've already seen at least 15 entries submitted or in the works, and it's only been two days since the announcement, which is pretty nuts. Entrants have come up with some pretty crazy updates to Aqua, 3D finders, distributed software updates, advanced tagging, album art browsing in iTunes, split safari windows, and more. I'll be displaying a couple of early entries in a few days, so keep on visiting!

In addition, I'm getting a little tired of the Fake Leopard Dogcow for the contest image, so I'm holding a mini-contest with this post for its replacement. Just post your entry in the comments section over the next couple of days, and I'll announce a winner on Friday, 12:00 in the afternoon EST. The prize for this one will be a copy of xScope ($16.95), Menuet ($12.95), Picture Framer ($5) and To Do Tracker ($5), DomainTracker ($24.95), ShapeShifter ($20) and WindowShade X ($10), and NotePad ($7.95). That's over a hundred bucks of software for a small graphic, so hopefully you guys will come up with some neat stuff! (And thanks again to the sponsors.)

As promised, today brings a new addition of "Pimp your App". The target? The beloved multi-protocol chat application, Adium. I can't think of any other app that really encourages customization as much as Adium, so while I'll be recommending various modifications available on the Adium Xtras site, I knew this Pimp your App had to include something else special. So of course, as many of you readers know, in an interview earlier in the week, Adium icon artist Adam Betts promised to release an updated application icon along with other goodies today. And I think you'll agree that he delivered in spades once you see what he came up with. Continue reading...

It's always a nice feeling to have the media give some attention to your apps as a (quasi) developer, so while this Menuet mention may've been small, it certainly brightened up the day when I found it while reading the latest issue of Macworld magazine. ("Your iTunes Toolbox", pg. 64. Click the image to read the snippet.)

Anyway, the real point of this post is this. We're working on a massive, massive update to Menuet, as well as an incremental update for Art Collector, and we're looking for localizers. Right now, English, French, Russian and Italian are taken care of, but if any of you readers are up for some translating (especially into Japanese) for some free licenses and credit in the About box, by all means shoot an email to support@specere.net. We've been looking for you. And the rest of you? I can't say too much about what this update will include (*cough* coolskinsnewuisdkandmuchmore *cough*) but I promise that you'll be the first ones to take this update for a spin when a beta build's ready. More on this as it develops.

Update: Well, we now have French, Spanish, German, Traditional Chinese and Finnish covered. Others would be appreciated so keep these coming.

Update Update: And even more localizers volunteered to translate into Swedish, Greek, Dutch, Polish, Japanese, Persian, and Arabic. Thanks everyone! Should be enough for now.

I'm sure I'm not alone when I say that I am starting to get really pumped up for WWDC, now just under a month away. Why? Well, I'm definitely expecting some new hardware from Apple. Mac Pros seem pretty likely. But what I'm really anticipating is the first sneak peak of Mac OS X Leopard, or 10.5.

Of course, it's still just under a month away. And frankly, while I love fake screenshots (I really do, they make you think, and sometimes they turn out to be, well, not so fake after all), the ones that have been popping up so far have been pretty disappointing. Tabbed Finder? Ok. iTunes style metal UI? Sounds good. Multiple desktops support? Sweet. Virtualization of Windows apps? I'm hoping for it. But let's be honest, Leopard could be sooo much cooler, and so could the fakes.

So, as my blog starts its second week of existence, I am kicking off a Fake Leopard Screenshot Contest. (Tagline: A picture may be worth a thousand words, but a fake one is worth nearly a thousand bucks of software!) If you think I'm joking, think again. I am being utterly, 100% serious. What this ultimately is is an exercise in conceptual UI design, and I am hoping that by the end of it, the three winning screenshots will be much cooler than the real Leopard's ever going to be. Well, ok, admittedly I'm secretly hoping that Leopard will trump these, but hopefully for the sake of this contest, this hope will prove outrageously false.

So, about the three winners. Winning usually involves prizes, does it not? Absolutely! So, to provide some incentive beyond recognition for your 1337 UI design skills, I have put together a rather awesome prize package of freebies, valued at just under $900 for each winner. Without further ado, presenting the bounty for an awesome fake screenshot: Continue reading...

I love Digg.com, and believe that the idea behind it (users coming up with and filtering out good content) is really cool. So I was pretty excited to hear from Arne Fismen yesterday about a new Mac software tracking site he and his buddy Marcus have been working on over the past year.

The result is "iusethis.com", a website where Mac users can keep track of the latest software updates with a new (and pleasantly familiar) twist: iusethis also allows its users to claim "I use this" status on each app with a Digg-like clickable counter, and as a result, you can easily view the day's updates with the convenient filter of popularity.

Perhaps most promising? Arne and Marcus are currently implementing a powerful recommendation system based on these statistics. Eventually, iusethis will be able to very accurately recommend software by comparing your app collection with those of others. Sounds really cool, and I wish the best of luck to these two guys. If you find this interesting, be sure to check out the public beta, though to note, Arne has specifically asked you guys to resist submitting this to Digg for now.

Recently featured in my Top Ten list of Most Beautiful OS X Apps, the wonderful freeware Tetris clone, Quinn, has recently been pulled from Simon Haertel's website. The reason? The Tetris Company has sent a legal threat, viewable here. According to the developer's post, "I do not know of any clear legal precedent on this matter and The Tetris Company has never actually taken anyone to court over the issue while numerous Tetris-like games continue to be distributed today. In fact, this is not the first time Simon has been bullied by this company and it seems the mere fact that I live in the United States represents a much clearer path for The Tetris Company to push us around."

 

This is truly a disappointing event, and hopefully it wasn't my list that brought the game on to the Tetris Company's radar. My sincere condolences to the developer, and I hope that the story will not end here. If you liked the game, maybe this is a good time to shoot off an email to the developer and offer support.

With my blog's design getting some attention recently, artist Tom Stoelwinder of Model Concept and I decided it was time to start polishing its look. You may notice that we've upped the line height for more readability, worked on the comments bar, replaced the "pages" navigation sticky and replaced it with a more useful "recent posts" area, and also added a nifty virtual vcard for you guys to download, as well as a cool favicon. Got any more peeves with this current iteration? Let me know in the comments, feedback would always be appreciated!