Our beloved Ringo has just added some new free ringtones for all of those using Ringo. Made exclusively for Ringo, you won’t find these ringtones anywhere but at www.ringomo.com. Ranging in a mix of Classical, Country, Rock, Salsa (mmmm, salsa and chips) and Ragtime, you’re phone will keep things interesting with every call.

If you don’t know about Ringo, then read our review and find out why we loved it. It works for BlackBerry, WIndows Mobile, and the beloved (but forgotten?) Palm OS. With its easy to user interface and ability to play MP3s for ringtones and messages tones, why wouldn’t you get Ringo now? Ringo is available at ringomo.com for US$19.95.

Mariner Software, developers and publishers of professional and personal software, announced today the release of MacGourmet Deluxe, its ultra-modern recipe and wine management software for Mac OS X. MacGourmet Deluxe is the latest release in Mariner Software’s award-winning line of personal creativity software.

MacGourmet Deluxe brings recipe collection and organization into the digital age. Users are able to create, edit and share recipes; make wine and cooking notes, and easily import recipes found on the Web and expand their collection. Recipes can be published to a .mac account or to a personal Web site. MacGourmet Deluxe can also create a shopping list that can be printed or exported to a PDA.

Even more exciting in the introduction of MacGourmet Deluxe is an industry first feature - the Cookbook Builder. Using a recipe collection, the user can build, print and share their own cookbook. The Cookbook Builder allows the easy addition of images, chapters and text pages. Saving it as a high resolution PDF, the cookbook can be printed out on a desktop printer or through a print-on-demand source.

Also in this release of MacGourmet Deluxe:
A Mealplan feature to create a weekly meal plan with iCal integration.
Access to the USDA Nutritional database.
The ability to view the nutritional value of recipes.
All-new shopping list editor, with simple pantry/favorites and column ordering/hiding functionality added.
The addition of a number of award winning recipes.
Pricing and Availability:

MacGourmet Deluxe is now available on the Mariner Software Web site at www.marinersoftware.com. The shipping version will initially be offered in English and sell for $49.95USD ($44.95 download). Support for more languages is expected in the near future. MacGourmet Deluxe requires Mac OS 10.4 or higher. The standard version of MacGourmet will continue to be available on the Advenio Web site. Registered MacGourmet customers may upgrade to MacGourmet Deluxe for a special price in the Mariner Software eStore.

Just the other day, I ran into a printer driver issue. The CD-ROM the HP LaserJet 4200 that came with the printer didn’t seem to want to print graphics or reports properly. HP’s web site didn’t feel like offering up the latest driver as 404s kept coming up. So in the end, I used the old retired PC, with the proper drivers on it, as a printer server. Maybe I should have gone to Xerox’s site for the driver instead. Yes, I said Xerox.

Xerox has just informed SvenOnTech of a printer driver that not only works on every Xerox printer, but nearly every printer (PostScript enabled printers). The Xerox Mobile Express Driver automatically detects your location (laptop or desktop) based on your network and updates its list of preferred printers. Every time you print, you have a list of online and available printers. You do nothing but click that Print icon! The Xerox Mobile Express Driver allows you to sort printers based on status, location, name, and so forth. You can find out in-depth detail about each printer to find the one that best meets your needs. Everything is automatic as it configures the printer for you.

The best thing about this driver is if you’re a road warrior and find yourself in many offices with various printers, you’ll now be able to print to them without having to call IT or go to a manufacturers web site that may be down for a model specific driver. The Xerox Mobile Express Driver takes care of this all for you. Nice.

This is a Windows only driver (Mac OS X has a built-in generic PostScript driver already) and can be downloaded and installed for free.

Have you ever needed to push your brainstorm session beyond the coma paced results you have gotten in the past? Need a better way to study for your final exam? Or you’re a Microsoft engineer and you’re trying to problem solve your company’s search technology lacking after the Yahoo fall-out? Well, then you need a mind map! According to Wikipedia, a mind map is, “A… diagram used to represent words, ideas, tasks, or other items linked to and arranged radially around a central key word or idea. It is used to generate, visualize, structure, and classify ideas, and as an aid in study, organization, problem solving, decision making, and writing.” Makes sense, huh? If not, look at the picture above and see if that helps.

If this all does make sense to you, then you’ll probably be happy to know that NovaMind has updated its well known mind mapping software with some snazzy Web 2.0 features such as glass branches that you can apply rectangular, chamfered, rounded or oval, that can, “Instantly add that extra visual pizzazz.” Additionally you can pictures with sweet looking reflections being able to apply the same effects as you can to the branches.

Themes have been updated as well with new themes being added to take advantage of the new visual styling features. According to NovaMinds, “This gives you professionally designed themes for your Mind Maps to make them look great by simply applying a theme.”

Take a look and start making your brain work easier!

I find myself always needing to text my team through the day while I sit at my computer. I pull my iPhone off its dock and type out the message. Every time I do it, I wished I could just send the message from my Mac Pro. Well, now I can…kind of.

For me specifically, I can’t since Apple found it necessary not to allow me to easily pair my MacBook Pro and my iPhone; however, others using a Bluetooth enabled phone most likely can. With the Quick-dial and Quick-send plug-in, you open Address Book and click on the number you want to send a text message to (usually the mobile number.) Up opens a window for you to text into and off it transfers to your phone which then sends the message as if it came from the phone. Nice, huh? Ya, real nice.

If you’d rather just call your contact from the Address Book, then select “Dial Number with…” and it’ll dial it up on your non-iPhone phone. This is a really nice trick if you don’t feel like going through your large address book on the phone itself when you can more quickly type the contacts name in the search box of Address Book that comes with OS X.

So for $10, you can add this cool plug-in and be the envy of all iPhone users. After a hiatus from Leopard, it once again works with the latest OS X (10.5.2 and higher). Enjoy, text, dial.

I have fond memories of the early 80s in which I sat patiently in front of my Technics dual tape deck waiting for the DJ to start the newest Def Leppard song on KSJO. Off my finger came from the pause button and on went the recording. I could see the tape moving inside the display window of my Maxell XL-IIS tape. Man, I got a lot of good tunes that way and I kind of miss watching the tape grow smaller on the left side while feeding the right side. Thankfully, toastycode has brought back that warm fuzzy feeling for me via TapeDeck.

TapeDeck allows you to easily record audio on your Mac from a single source as easily as just pressing that red Record button on the tape deck. You know the recording is happening from the “dancing” meter as well, get this, from the tape moving in the display window. Just like the old days! When you’re all done recording, TapeDeck files your “tape” in a shoe box with your added titles and allows for easy retrieval later by simply clicking on the tape. Very simple, very cool. You can share your recordings via email, send them to iTunes or to Apple TV.

TapeDeck isn’t meant to take sales from sophisticated software like WireTap Studio but rather fill in that little void for a simple to use single-source recordings. For $25, this is a straight up winner in my book. Now excuse me before I release the pause button as I prepare to record “Go” from Def Leppard’s new album, “Songs From The Sparkle Lounge“.

Remember the first version of Windows Media Player that came with Windows95? Ya, it was a joke. A big one. When compared to Apple’s QuickTime (QT), Microsoft had a long road of acquisitions ahead of it. Instead of standing still Apple pushed the envelope with QuickTime and added innovating features such as QuickTime VR. QT VR allowed a user to “spin” an object 360 degrees around and look up and down a bit with the movement of their mouse. This was a decade before it showed up in Flash on web sites! As the web became popular, Apple’s attention to it gave programmers interaction (QTi in 1998) with its users.

But Apple’s direction seemed to have made a change by 2002 when it released 6.x. Now supporting the competition through Flash 5 and scriptable ActiveX controls, outside of MPEG-4 support, there was little innovation anymore. Certainly the release of 7.x and H.264 was a great addition; however, by this time, less and less use of QuickTime could be found on the web. Flash was king and QuickTime seemed to no longer sing. While Adobe was thrusting user interaction features to developers in Flash, Apple seemed to slowly add a bread crumb here and a bread crumb there to QuickTime ignoring the flashy San Jose-based company’s web progress.

What used to be considered an excellent medium for multimedia presentation on the web is now not even considered by most web developers today. Apple’s limited supply of user interaction has left it in the cold of consideration and oddly enough, Apple doesn’t even seem to care. Using the same underlying architecture created in 1991, QuickTime is the heart and soul of iTunes and thus seems to be Apple’s only true intention for this multimedia maverick. With all the money Apple paid Apple Records, Ltd. in settlement fees all those years ago, one would think any company with half the brains of Apple would push such a ground breaking application. So why the disinterest? What happened? While Apple announced QuickTime X this week at WWDC 2008, it won’t be out for at least another year in which its market share will have been even more eroded. Even upon release, will it deliver?

SvenOnTech has spoken to and heard many developers complain about QuickTime. The complaints range from how heavy QuickTime is now (does Microsoft make this?) to its near zero user interaction interface. Even though it looks great for movie trailers and other video footage, the latest version of Flash handles this just as well if not better because of all the other goodies that come along with it. QuickTime is just not usable anymore. Sad. Once die-hard fans of the multimedia application are now completely ignoring it, just like Apple.