Guess what? Things are stirring again. Actually, they've been stirring for a while, but I've had to keep quiet about most of them. I'm planning some huge updates to the site though in the upcoming week or two.

For any MDA fans out there, if you missed it, we're running a developer competition now to select the right developers for Season 2. And if you're a developer, you'll definitely want to check it out.

MacThemes 2... is out! Huge props to Ricky, Johnny and Dave for pulling it off, and kudos to David Lanham and Renn of Atacama Design for the great design refresh. The front page is now active again with a reallly excited news staff, so while I'm taking things pretty hands off, I'll be looking forward to reading all the new content.

MacHeist? Well... it's over, I guess. But it's a long break between now and the next one. Maybe we'll think of something to fill that hiatus up.

There's other stuff coming up, and I'll be making efforts soon to get some more discussion going between me and you guys. But for now, the blog is definitely continuing in hibernation. (I have over 10,000 comments in moderation, mostly spam. I don't even know where to begin.) Stick with the twitter feed for updates.

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!

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'"

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!

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.

It's been non-stop for me over the past week as we've judged the thousands of entries that came in for My Dream App and picked 24 finalists. Here are my thoughts on them as a whole.

A good 80% were uninspired, infeasible (probably the most common reason for eliminating entries), or already done. 15% were decent but not well fleshed out. We were judging looking at the potential of an idea as well as its current form, but a lot of them just didn't have much beyond the one good idea. Continue reading...

Check it out, and have fun! (And if you like it, Digg it )

Well, that was a dry stretch. Sorry about that, but I've been consumed by my current project for the past week, getting it ready for launch.

This is going to be the final teaser before My Dream App opens up, so I'm going to give you guys some substantial info, instead of the list of names that the last teaser basically was. Continue reading...