Anyone who’s spent time in any major city will have inevitably run into the age-old conundrum of where and what to eat when they feel like going out. Chinese or Pizza? If you’re going to do something Asian, why not that new Thai place? Even the most decisive of folks can be turned into blubbering infants when faced with so many options.

Things only get worse when you’re eating with others. Steve likes Italian, but Joe really wants a Burger. Inevitably, someone isn’t going to get their way, creating a rift between friends that will lie dormant until sometime in the future when it leads to the two of them never speaking to each other again. What we really need is an impartial Solomonic arbiter to assist us in these difficult decisions. Some kind of automated computing machine, perhaps… Continue reading…

A little over two months ago, I previewed an upcoming YouTube client by my friend Steve Streza. The app is still upcoming, but it’s a lot closer to release, and taking a cue from some mutual friends, Steve is taking preorders for his app, now renamed Tubular. (CBS threatened suit for InnerTube.)

Before you kill him about the presale, it’s worth noting that in this case, you guys actually do know what you’re digging into your wallets for. Plus, Steve is hoping he can continue development on a bit more robust of a development platform than his aging G4 iBook.

While the name has changed, Tubular is still very much the app it was promised to be. It features extremely slick YouTube video browsing (couchpotatos will love keyboard navigation), easy video organization by drag and drop, and one click video conversion for playback of your favorite videos on your iPod.

As always with presales, it’s a bit of a risk to purchase the app before it’s released. But there are, of course, some perks. The price on the blog for interested people is $12.99. (I’ve been told it’ll sell for $19.99 when 1.0 is released.) But hardcore YouTubing blog readers can grab this for $9.99 by clicking here. Enjoy! (Digg it!

Jan over at MacRabbit has just released version 2 of his CSS editor. I can’t emphasize enough what a beautiful app this is. CSSEdit 2 is truly a labor of love, and the final product simply reeks of Aqua goodness. (If I revised my top ten list of beautiful OS X apps, this one would be near the top for sure.)

CSSEdit 2 has been in the works for over a year, and the list of changes is pretty substantial. One of the cooler new features is the ability to “X-ray” webpages to visually identify different elements of your site:

And another great thing about CSSEdit is the fact that it makes CSS very easy to edit for noobs like me, with its extensive visual editing tools. Even I can drag and drop. Woohoo!

There’s plenty of other neat things in this release. I’ve been having some fun tweaking other sites with its “Extract from Site” and browser integration features. (Plus its very powerful instant preview support.) This is honestly a must have for any web designer. (And as a further plug, a beta of 2.0 was used extensively by our web coder, Scott Meinzer, on the My Dream App and MacHeist websites.)

A huge congratulations to Jan for this excellent release. Check out the changelog and download the app on MacRabbit, and Digg it to spread the word!

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…

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…

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…

As I wrote a while ago, I had been having hosting troubles for this blog. Those days are now past, as last night, My Dream App web programmer Scott Meinzer helped me move the site over to a blazingly fast dedicated server, hosted by 1&1. (Major kudos to Scott. His internet was acting up so he actually drove over to his workplace to use their wifi in the car. I can’t thank him enough.) I know, I know, some of you warned me about 1&1′s service in the previous blog post, but no worries… I’ve had nothing but good service running a dedicated box with them for MDA.

What does that mean? Well, my site should now be completely Digg proof, and should run significantly faster. It’s like a fresh install of OS X! I’m loving the snappiness.

And, probably of more interest to you guys, is I have not one, but three previews coming up for cool new apps (and a cool new update). The first should be up today or tomorrow, so stay tuned!

Ah, and a final note… I’ve been resisting posting about my ongoing project on this blog, with the misguided motivation of separating personal stuff from work, or something. But then I realized two things. First, it’s cool stuff, so why not? Second, we’ve been giving away free apps, and I should’ve let you guys know! So. For a limited time, while Round 2 of voting just ended, along with the chance for voters to walk away with a free copy of the excellent Mori.

That’s it for now… lots of stuff coming soon.

Just a week after my preview, Dave Watanabe’s Xtorrent is now available publicly in public beta form. The build will expire when the beta testing period is over, and you can read some release notes on Dave’s blog. If you didn’t read the preview, Xtorrent is a new BitTorrent application that, among other things, features a truly beautiful UI and unique total search integration, so torrents can easily be searched for and started within the app with just a few clicks. Enjoy everyone, this is a pretty awesome app!