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!

What we've been calling "Act 2" after My Dream App has just begun, and it's called MacHeist. Thousands of you signed up with interest in the event, and over the next few days, you'll be receiving spiffy invite tickets by mail. (It's a closed event for now.)

And for the rest of you... well, if you'd like a taste of what Heist will be about, I encourage you to check out this post on TUAW. We call it a wild monkey chase. See, unlike most wild goose chases, this one involves a monkey, and actually ends somewhere cool. (Plus I think you'll agree. It's pretty hilarious seeing people's reactions to over a dozen monkeys mysteriously popping up all over the Mac web.)

Enjoy, and hopefully I'll be seeing some of you soon inside MacHeist! And Digg this!

For those of you who participated in My Dream App, you know what Insanely Great Tees is. But for those of you who don't, my friends at Monkey Business Labs have just opened up their Mac-centric t-shirt shop, and it's full of some really great shirts for all of you hardcore Mac users. My personal favorite is the "Magic Eraser" shirt pictured on the left, and I'm looking forward to more shirts sporting visual puns as the store fills out. (There are currently six designs available for purchase.)

I'm aware of two other Mac-related t-shirt vendors. If you guys know of any others, be sure to let me know in the comments!

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...