These days, most of you know Red Sweater Software and my work for MarsEdit, the amazing desktop blog editor that I acquired from NewsGator almost two (!) years ago.

But I love my other apps, too. And among these, FastScripts is one of the oldest. Even before expanding my product line a couple years ago, I didn’t bother promoting FastScripts much, because it’s very much an application that “you either get, or you don’t.” Fortunately, as the years have passed, people continue to get it without much work on my part. Coincidentally, Brent Simmons, the original developer of MarsEdit, recently caught FastScripts fever and summarized his thoughts:

I actually have a fighting chance at keeping up on email thanks to FastScripts! Easily worth more than its price.

See, FastScripts is kind of a nerd tool. You won’t know you need it until you need it. And if you never do? More power to you!

The latest example comes from Dr. Drang, who discovered FastScripts makes a nice adjunct to a couple other tools, LaunchBar and Jumpcut. In his post, Dr. Drang describes how he’s replaced the ever-popular Quicksilver with this trio of tools:

The combination of LaunchBar (for launching applications, opening folders, and occasionally running scripts), FastScripts Lite (for running scripts most of the time), and Jumpcut (for keeping and accessing a Clipboard history) has made me a happier and more productive Mac user.

FastScripts continues to be a project of love for me, and I am always gratified when I find that love reflected back from users who try it and discover it “fits the bill” for them. There are lots of improvements I can think of for the utility, but it satisfies its core feature requirements very well. Need to run scripts quickly and possibly at the touch of a keystroke? FastScripts might be the right tool for you!

I’m happy to announce Black Ink 1.1.3, our premium crossword solving application, is now available for download or automatic update.

We recently lost a puzzle source, the Little Rock Daily Record, which has stopped publishing its puzzle. But the good news is we picked up a few excellent new sources to balance out the loss.

The update also includes a few minor bugs. Full details:

• New puzzle sources:
  • Chicago Reader
  • Onion AV Club
  • Chronicle of Higher Education
• Remove Little Rock Daily Record – no longer published
• Bug fixes
  • Fix a problem with opening the wrong puzzle source when a source is disabled
  • Fix an issue printing puzzles of unusual dimensions

Enjoy!

Shortly after I blogged about the shortcomings of Tumblr’s API, Marco Arment of Tumblr commented on the post and expressed his sincere desire to set things right.

We got to chatting almost immediately, and the results were stunning. Marco made a round of changes in Tumblr as I experimented with the new features via MarsEdit. In the end, Marco was able to fix all of the critical shortcomings in the blog service’s interface, and added some additional goodies to boot.

Today, Marco made the revisions public, as announced on the Tumblr staff blog. I’m sure I’ll find suggestions and requests to pass along in the future, but the Tumblr API is now capable of providing a great user experience from desktop applications such as MarsEdit.

Which begs the question, when will MarsEdit be taking advantage of these new frills? I am making it a priority to release an update to MarsEdit as soon as possible with basic text entry support for Tumblr. I adjusted my feature planning a bit because I know how excited Tumblr users are to get their hands on something soon.

I expect MarsEdit 2.3 to feature this initial Tumblr support, and I’ll be working to get that released as soon as possible.

Apple is celebrating the benchmark of 10,000 shipping “apps” for the iPhone. If my scare quotes convey some negative connotation, then they’ve done their job. The vast majority of applications I’ve tried on the iPhone hardly deserve to celebrated.

I definitely do not think that sheer numbers are the story of the iPhone’s future, but if it makes some suits feel better about the device, then I’ll join in the cheers. 10,000 individual products for sale or free download definitely indicates a high degree of interest.

The guys at Tap Tap Tap have taken the opportunity to put together a remarkable poster-sized graphic of the icons from these 10,000 apps, arranged so as to look like a photo of an iPhone:

I think this was a really cool idea, even with a dubious point of celebration. For many of these apps, their presence in this poster is the most attractive they’ll ever be.