For those of you who are into the Mac GUI customization, NickelCobalt probably places somewhere near the top of your list of vaporware Mac themes. (Below BBX: Omega.) It's been over two years since Paul Johnson's NickelCobalt took 1st place in the MacThemes Theme Mockup Contest, and unbelievably, it is finally... almost here!

This has been a massive ongoing effort by Skins Factory designer Paul Johnson, master themer Max Rudberg, and Enhanced Labs designer Philipp Antoni, and the result is a very unique theme for OS X that mixes a metallic design with some cobalt blue. What truly stands out for me with NC is its feeling of depth. There really is nothing quite like it.

If you're interested in beta testing this, head on over to the MacThemesForums thread to sign up.

Click for a full screenshot.

Update: The beta is now posted here. Enjoy!

My friend, Jerry Brace of Embraceware, has just posted a public beta of Awaken 3.0. If you haven't checked this app out yet, Awaken is basically the best alarm clock app for OS X out there, and version 3.0 really amps it up with a complete rewrite and UI overhaul.

The first thing you'll probably notice is the new icon by icon designer Jasper Hauser. It'll be familiar to Awaken users, but it's a vast improvement over the old icon in subtle ways. That's an apt description for Awaken 3's user interface improvements as well. Continue reading...

We're currently running the My Dream App finals, so if you haven't voted yet, head on over, pick your favorites, and grab your freebies. (This round, we have a free license for the Apple Design Award recipient PhotoPresenter, as well as the slick launcher, Overflow. Plus $5 off coupons for InsanelyGreatTees!

Of course, the coolest part about this round in my opinion are some of the guest judges that have weighed in with their opinions. There's the lovely TV and podcast host Amber MacArthur, Finder creator and original Mac team member Bruce Horn, original Mac evangelist and popular book author Guy Kawasaki, Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak, and zune/Xbox creator J Allard.

It was stressful and intimidating coming up with a list of potential judges for the finals, because for this round, people expected us to go all out. So I ended up in a situation emailing invitations to the most ridiculous people. Phil Schiller gave me a really nice rejection, with a note saying he's been enjoying the contest so far. Jonathan Ive and Ray Ozzie sent rejections via personal assistants, saying they didn't have the time, but thanks. Unfortunately, Steve Jobs or Bill Gates still haven't replied. But I'm still waiting!

Steve Wozniak was extremely receptive to the contest idea from the start, and while his round of judging coincided with an extremely busy book tour, he got in some outrageous, hilarious comments. If you haven't voted yet, you have to simply to read his comment for Blossom. It's ridiculously awesome.

And ironically enough, I think J Allard (of Microsoft) gets the crown for the best overall comments for the round. What really impressed me about his comments was how much time he put into them. You can tell when he references forum opinions in one comment, and UI mockup progression in another. And in my opinion he was right on the money with most of his praise and complaints. So don't discount the zune quite yet. This man has a really good head on his shoulders. (Oh, and he replied to my invite from his home PowerMac G5. Go figure.)

I guess my conclusion is, it was a pleasant surprise how down to earth a lot of these tech "celebrities" were. They're normal people, just busier than most of us I suppose. To end this, let me share with you guys an extra comment J Allard sent in about the contest as a whole that we didn't have a place for in the MDA voting page:

"great idea. great format. great entries. in these days of crass commercialism, spam, flames, phishing, opportunism and hate common on the internet it was great to see a constructive and fun experience like this spring to life. i was highly impressed by the effort that went into organizing this. the reaction of the community was great and i enjoyed all of the different ideas proposed as well as the community’s support, creativity and enthusism for the different candidates. to phill, the contestants and the community, 'well done'"

My friends at the Potion Factory have been cooking something up for a while, and they're finally ready to give everyone a taste of their juicy creation. It's called Tangerine, and depending on how you look at it, it can be used for creating upbeat, active playlists of songs from your collection for working out with (or just pumping you up for that test coming up), or slow, soothing playlists for relaxing with. How does it do this? Boot up Tangerine and you'll be welcomed with a little rotating slice of tangerine as the app analyzes your music collection and assigns each track a "BPM", or "beats per minute" figure, along with values for "beat intensity". Continue reading...

Last year's "Bouncing Balls" commercial for Sony's new LCD TV's was one of the coolest videos I've ever seen. (If you haven't seen that one yet, check it out here.) Well, they're at it again, and this time they've replaced bouncing balls with paint to spectacular effect. The crazy part? As far as I can tell from the behind the scenes video they have on the website, this was done with zero CGI. All "paint mortars" and explosives, or as one of the technicians described it, "fireworks but with paint". (EDIT: As my friend Brian points out, they probably did use CGI to remove the cranes, barrels, and techicians. But the paint seems 100% real.) Check it out by clicking below.

According to this blog post, the video's filming involved "70,000 litres of paint, 358 single bottle bombs 33 sextuple air cluster bombs, 22 Triple hung cluster bombs, 268 mortars, 33 Triple Mortars 22 Double mortars, 358 meters of weld, 330 meters of steel pipe, 57 km of copper wire", plus a scary guy in a clown costume. All for 60 seconds of your amusement. Now go buy a Bravia TV.

Round 3 of voting is currently in progress (ends tonight at midnight) so if you haven't voted yet, head over and pick your favorites! (And pick up your free copy of Musicast, which I wrote about previously here. ) Be sure to check out comments from a group of 6 very talented UI and icon designers, including Adam Betts, Gedeon Maheux, David Lanham, Piotr Gajos, Bill "BBX" Bart, and Josh Keay.

One of the more common idea submissions for my ongoing software contest, My Dream App, was a "Quicken Killer" and ideas in a similar category. We had literally dozens submitted, and even a minor ruckus once people realized none had made it as a finalist. Why didn't we? Well, to be frank, it was decided that it would be difficult for a small development team to do properly in a relatively quick development cycle. Color me wrong, because Cha-Ching has done just that.

Currently in public beta as version 0.2, the first thing you'll notice when you download and launch this app is its impeccable presentation. Kudos to developer Juan Alvarez (this guy is hilarious, watch this video we shot at WWDC. And I swear if you watch the Keynote video, you'll hear him laughing in the background at points), and UI designer Krzysztof Wrosnki. This is a very pretty, very "OS X" app, and it's clear the team drew inspiration from Delicious Library's three-paned, custom control laden interface. And that's a good thing, because it works. (Delicious Library topped my Top Ten Beautiful OS X Apps list.) Continue reading...

The competition is getting fierce at My Dream App. This morning, contestant Kevin Capizzi posted a mockup video of how a full screen option on his forum browsing app, Hijack, might work. And it's pretty damn gorgeous. Props to him for stepping it up!

Hijack has been doing pretty well in the contest, and grabbed the second most votes in last week's round of voting. I have a feeling it's going to have a shot for #1 with this mockup.

Read his post, download the high-res version here, and if you like it, digg it!