Two of my independent software developer friends (on non-Mac platforms they’d probably be called competitors) have released substantially new versions of their products today! It’s probably hard for non-developers to appreciate just how much work goes into even a modest set of improvements.

Software is hard work. And the hard work isn’t all in the functionality, but in the fine-tuning. Woodworkers will appreciate that the amount of time spent sanding, shellacing, etc. often far outpaces the time spent crudely cutting out the shape of an object.

LicenseKeeper 1.2 is an unbelievable streamlined way of keeping track of all the software licenses you’ve purchased. For most of us I expect our current solution is a dedicated email folder, at best. License Keeper takes all the work, and stress, out of managing your software assets.

Hazel 2 is a full-time housekeeper for the files on your Mac. What if you could be a slob about files and just drop them wherever you please, cluttering up your desktop and clogging your home directory with hundreds of downloads, notes, and temporary files? Well, most of us already are slobs in this way, but Hazel makes it incredibly easy to let your computer keep itself tidy!

Let’s give Jon and Paul a big hand by downloading and trying out their latest masterpieces!

While I was at WWDC this year, Scott McNulty and Victor Agreda from TUAW caught up with me. Scott and I had a nice chat while Victor manned the camera.

I think it turned out pretty well. We spent a good portion of the time talking about and showing off Black Ink. So if you’ve been curious about the Mac’s premier crossword-solving application, but haven’t gotten around to trying it, maybe you’ll be interested in seeing a video demo of it!

Although I’m still hard at work on 2.0, I haven’t forgotten about MarsEdit 1.2! I’ve been collecting smaller fixes that will be welcomed my many users.

MarsEdit 1.2.1 changes:

• For new weblogs, set default comment status to “Open”
• Sort Technorati Tags alphabetically in dialog
• Fix a bug that could cause “Edit With External Editor” to get stuck editing
• Fix appearance of text “#extended#” in the preview
• Blogger Specific
  • Fix issue with authenticating Blogger when user has google hosted account
  • Fix a “phantom category” bug with Blogger blogs that have no categories

Well – it looks like I wrote my first iPhone utility. A pretty remarkable feat when you consider that I don’t have an iPhone. Even more remarkable when you consider the utility was written in late 2005, and hasn’t been touched since :)

Today Jason Snell, the editor of Macworld, discovered a clever trick for putting getting audio onto your iPhone from whatever Mac you happen to be on. The clever trick is implemented with the help of my experimental utility, Typecast.

I had originally written the utility to help turn normal files into podcasts, because I prefer the way iTunes handles podcast files for spoken word audio. Jason figured out that if you sync the iPhone’d podcasts separately from music, you can effectively overwrite your “podcasts” with whatever audio files no matter where you are. Just set up a fake podcast with Typecast, and sync!

I think it’s a pretty cool example of simple software enabling a complex solution. The fact that the software is still useful now, and useful in conjunction with a piece of hardware I don’t even own, makes me pretty happy.