Black Ink 2.2.8 is now available on the Black Ink site and on the Mac App Store.

This update addresses an issue where a user with a valid New York Times account but not access to the premium games subscription, would be repeatedly prompted to enter their password. Now, Black Ink will detect that the login succeeded but that the user doesn’t have access to the crossword, and inform them.

The calendar picker has also been updated to address a couple small usability issues.

Complete list of changes for this release:

• Improvements to NYT authentication process
• Calendar picker favors the current/latest puzzle date if a new puzzle has arrived since last opening
• Calendar picker allows selection of valid puzzle days from the next/previous month

If you enjoy Black Ink, please consider writing a review or rating the app on the Mac App Store, and spreading the word on Facebook or Twitter! Thanks for your support.

MarsEdit 5.1b2 is now available for folks who want to try the under-development support for posting and editing entries on Mastodon microblogs.

Unfortunately the first beta had a bug that prevents it from recognizing newer beta releases, so if you downloaded 5.1b1, you’ll need to manually download MarsEdit 5.1b2 and replace your older copy. Future updates should be delivered as expected via the app’s built-in updating system.

Click Here to Download MarsEdit 5.1b2

This update includes a number of fixes which are generally applicable and not unique to Mastodon. Here’s the complete list of changes:

• Fix software update mechanism to update automatically to future betas
• HTML Entities are now syntax-highlighted and ignored for live spell checking
• Improve design, typography, and wording of New Blog interface
• Improve appearance of the image attachments area when “always show scroll bar” is enabled
• Fix a bug that sometimes caused spell checking to fail in Plain Text editing mode
• Changes to Custom Field preferences are now reflected immediately in affected post windows

If you enjoy MarsEdit, please consider writing a review or rating the app on the Mac App Store, spreading the word on Facebook or Twitter, and of course, writing about the app on your own blog! Thanks for your support.j

It’s taken a bit longer than I’d hoped, but I’m finally ready to share a preliminary update to MarsEdit with support for downloading, editing, and publishing posts to Mastodon-based microblogs.

Click here to download MarsEdit 5.1b1 for Mac

To get started, just install the beta, add a new blog, and for the “Homepage URL” of the new blog, enter the URL of the Mastodon instance on which you have an account.

After you’re logged in MarsEdit will download your existing posts and you can use either the regular “New Post” menu item to compose a post, or the “New Micropost” item for a more streamlined interface.

For the time being the Micropost interface still doesn’t support image attachments, but that is something I hope to address before the 5.1 update is finalized.

FastScripts 3.2.7 is now available on the FastScripts home page, or by selecting “Check for Update” from the FastScripts menu.

This update is a quick fix to restore compatibility with the Bartender menu bar utility. The 3.2.6 update indavertently reverted a fix that was originally added in version 3.0.6.

If you enjoy FastScripts, please consider spreading the word on Facebook or Twitter! Thanks for your support.