Congratulations to my friends Dave Dribin and Wolf Rentzsch, whose recently formed company, Bit Maki Software, has just released its maiden product: Textcast 1.0.

The application is designed to make it easy to turn any text from the web, an RSS feed, or a simple text file, into an audio podcast you can listen to just like any other podcast in iTunes. The software takes advantage of Mac OS X’s excellent “Alex” voice synthesizer.

There are some similarities between Textcast and my application, Typecast. Aside from the names, they are both designed to package up data into podcast form so that it can be easily digested using iTunes. I suggested to Dave Dribin that I would be happy to donate Typecast’s source code if they ever decide to incorporate its functionality into Textcast. We shall see!

The holidays are upon us, and if you’re anything like me, you’ve put off buying gifts for your friends and loved ones until almost the last minute!

I hope you won’t overlook the possibility of sending the gift of software this year. Thanks to a new feature in the Red Sweater Store, it’s finally easy to order any of our applications as a gift license for somebody you care about.

Just make your purchase as usual, but when you get to the checkout page, fill in the lucky recipient’s name:

The license information will be sent to you by email, so you can package it up in your own charming way, before passing it on.

One of the “problems” of gifting software these days is that most of the best applications are sold as purely electronic downloads from the web. I have to admit that the old-fashioned boxes made it easier to stick something under the tree, but with a little creativity you can give software gifts that are thoughtful and also have an element of “hand assembled” uniqueness to them.

For the puzzle lover in your life, may I suggest Black Ink bundled with a crossword solving dictionary, and a nice pen?

Know somebody who has talked about blogging for years, but never manages to get started? Perhaps a copy of MarsEdit, a copy of Strunk & White, and some encouraging words will be just the nudge they need.

These ideas are the tip of the iceberg. Perhaps the person on your gift list isn’t suited to my products at all. There are hundreds of independent Mac developers whose excellent products could bring a smile to your loved ones this holiday season. Take a look around!

Enjoy the holiday season, and I hope you all have a very happy new year!

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!