Ann Arbor, MI
November 30, 2011
Ann Arbor, MI - Mac users can enjoy both iDupe and CaliBrate, two of Wooden Brain Concepts’ flagship products, at a great discount from now until Christmas. Wooden Brain Concepts, a software company specializing in practical tools for Mac home users, has partnered with TheMacBundles for an exclusive discount in this season's holiday bundle as well as in its innovative Build Your Own Bundle stores, where people can put together their own discounted software packages.
“The two products we’re making available as part of this bundle are immensely useful tools for anyone who uses iTunes and iCal,” said Loren Ryter, President. “We know you’ll agree when you try them. That's why we're working with TheMacBundles - we want to get our software in more hands.”
“iDupe is a smart duplicates scanner for iTunes. iDupe makes smart decisions about which track in a set of identified duplicates to keep, rather than relying on a single criterion, as many other similar products do. You make the final decision about whether it picked the correct one, then let iDupe handle duplicate clean up from there.”
“CaliBrate, meanwhile, is a multi-purpose utility for iCal. It allows you to perform many batch functions with events, such as removing duplicates, adding or removing alarms, modifying titles and notes, moving events between calendars, and much more. Search criteria are extremely flexible, and you can save frequently used searches for later. CaliBrate is also able to create new events from text dropped onto its ‘Magic Hat’.”
TheMacBundles was setup by Steve Becker as a “Farmers’ Market” for software, essentially a co-op where software developers can bundle their software titles for maximum exposure. Users are protected by TheMacBundles' no-fine-print policy, which means that purchasers of its bundles get the same software, support, licenses, and upgrade benefits that apply to users who pay the full price for the software. That’s why TheMacBundles motto is: “No Games, No Hype, No Middlemen...Just Great Software at a Great Price™.”
This Holiday Bundle of 14 titles has a retail value of nearly $475 but sells for only $49.95, and includes both iDupe and CaliBrate, two of Wooden Brain Concepts’ top-selling applications.
TheMacBundles
Wooden Brain Concepts
iDupe
CaliBrate
Wooden Brain Concepts has been making Mac software for well over 10 years. Besides iDupe and CaliBrate, its popular products include OmniGrowl (which provides all kinds of practical notifications using Growl) and Cast Away (a utility to customize podcast management and auto-playback on a per-podcast basis). Wooden Brain Concepts believes in affordable software and the true principle of shareware.
###
Loren Ryter
President
Wooden Brain Concepts
woodenbrain@kagi.com
Wednesday, November 30, 2011
Tuesday, November 1, 2011
MoveTunes Update fixes issue involving retaining playlists
Wooden Brain Concepts today released an update to MoveTunes to fix an issue involving retaining playlists.
After a recent iTunes update, the option to retain playlists had ceased working due to a change made in iTunes involving a shift from "Audiobooks" to just "Books". This has now been fixed.
MoveTunes is a utility to selectively move iTunes music among volumes while retaining certain metadata, like artwork, play counts, ratings, and playlists.
As usual, please see the version history for details.
After a recent iTunes update, the option to retain playlists had ceased working due to a change made in iTunes involving a shift from "Audiobooks" to just "Books". This has now been fixed.
MoveTunes is a utility to selectively move iTunes music among volumes while retaining certain metadata, like artwork, play counts, ratings, and playlists.
As usual, please see the version history for details.
Thursday, October 6, 2011
OmniGrowl supports Mac App Store Growl
Wooden Brain Concepts today released an update to OmniGrowl to support the new Mac App Store version of Growl, Growl 1.3.
As noted in our last blog posting, when Growl moved to the Mac App Store and became a menu bar application, OmniGrowl had ceased to recognize it as installed. This has now been fixed. Please note that OmniGrowl does require that Growl remain in the default installation location, that is your Applications folder.
As of this release, the Growl team has not yet released its developer toolkit ("SDK"), so this should be considered a provisional fix. After the SDK is released, additional compatibility improvements will follow as needed.
In addition, fixes were made for the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) Word of the Day notification.
As usual, please refer to the version history for details.
As noted in our last blog posting, when Growl moved to the Mac App Store and became a menu bar application, OmniGrowl had ceased to recognize it as installed. This has now been fixed. Please note that OmniGrowl does require that Growl remain in the default installation location, that is your Applications folder.
As of this release, the Growl team has not yet released its developer toolkit ("SDK"), so this should be considered a provisional fix. After the SDK is released, additional compatibility improvements will follow as needed.
In addition, fixes were made for the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) Word of the Day notification.
As usual, please refer to the version history for details.
Tuesday, October 4, 2011
OmniGrowl and Growl 1.3 (MAS)
The Growl folks today released a Mac App Store only version of Growl. OmniGrowl 4.4.2 does not recognize this installation.
A fix will be coming relatively soon, but ideally we need to wait for the Growl team to release their toolkit ("SDK") to developers first. If that does not get released in a timely fashion, we will release a provisional fix to be followed by full support for Growl 1.3.
Thanks for your patience, early adopters!
A fix will be coming relatively soon, but ideally we need to wait for the Growl team to release their toolkit ("SDK") to developers first. If that does not get released in a timely fashion, we will release a provisional fix to be followed by full support for Growl 1.3.
Thanks for your patience, early adopters!
Saturday, September 24, 2011
OmniGrowl 64-Bit Mode Restored
WBC today released another compatibility upgrade for OmniGrowl on OS X Lion.
The main change is that OmniGrowl now runs in 64-bit mode. Support for OS X versions as old as Tiger and for PPC Macs has been retained (for now) as well.
As usual please refer to the version history for details.
The main change is that OmniGrowl now runs in 64-bit mode. Support for OS X versions as old as Tiger and for PPC Macs has been retained (for now) as well.
As usual please refer to the version history for details.
Saturday, September 17, 2011
OmniGrowl Roars Louder on Lion, Plays Nice with GeekTool
WBC today released another compatibility upgrade for OmniGrowl on OS X Lion.
Last August, WBC released the first compatibility upgrade, then we promptly took off on vacation. But wouldn't you know it, some issues remained. We believe these have now all been fixed.
Issues with iTunes notifications and artwork have been fixed. Also, GeekTool integration has been restored with the version of GeekTool available on the Mac App Store.
As usual please refer to the version history for details.
Last August, WBC released the first compatibility upgrade, then we promptly took off on vacation. But wouldn't you know it, some issues remained. We believe these have now all been fixed.
Issues with iTunes notifications and artwork have been fixed. Also, GeekTool integration has been restored with the version of GeekTool available on the Mac App Store.
As usual please refer to the version history for details.
Monday, August 15, 2011
OmniGrowl Roaring on Lion
WBC today released a Lion compatibility upgrade for OmniGrowl. Most features had been working normally on Lion, but a few tweaks were needed.
In particular, time out errors related to Address Book dates checking should now be eliminated. It is also now possible to set a hidden preference to turn off the feature to quit after excessive time outs completely, or to increase the number of time outs before OmniGrowl will quit. (This "quit" feature is deliberate: the idea is if for some reason OmniGrowl is repeatedly getting stuck, there's no reason to tie up your system…)
As usual, please see the version history for details.
Note:
Early downloaders of OmniGrowl 4.3.4 with PPC Macs: please re-download the universal binary version. Dropping PPC support may soon come, but not yet! (The universal version was posted at 7 pm EDT on Aug 15.)
In particular, time out errors related to Address Book dates checking should now be eliminated. It is also now possible to set a hidden preference to turn off the feature to quit after excessive time outs completely, or to increase the number of time outs before OmniGrowl will quit. (This "quit" feature is deliberate: the idea is if for some reason OmniGrowl is repeatedly getting stuck, there's no reason to tie up your system…)
As usual, please see the version history for details.
Note:
Early downloaders of OmniGrowl 4.3.4 with PPC Macs: please re-download the universal binary version. Dropping PPC support may soon come, but not yet! (The universal version was posted at 7 pm EDT on Aug 15.)
Friday, June 17, 2011
MoveTunes update adds features
Wooden Brain Concepts today released an update to MoveTunes which adds features and improves performance.
MoveTunes now retains artwork when moving music files.
It also includes the option to copy moved tracks to a MoveTunes Moved playlist. This helps if you use smart playlists based on recently added music, because you can now exclude that playlist.
MoveTunes also now includes an option to copy the original track to a MoveTunes Removed playlist. This greatly improves performance, because now MoveTunes does not need to have iTunes remove each move track individually, which takes time with larger libraries. Instead, you can delete all the tracks from that playlist when MoveTunes is done, by selecting them all and then hitting command-option-delete.
This update fixes critical issues and also helps to improve security. It includes fixes for vulnerabilities that an attacker can use to overwrite the contents of your computer's memory with malicious code.
We're just joking about that last one. (Version histories for Microsoft Office for some reason say that every time...) But other minor under-the-hood improvements were also made. Please see the version history for details, as usual.
MoveTunes now retains artwork when moving music files.
It also includes the option to copy moved tracks to a MoveTunes Moved playlist. This helps if you use smart playlists based on recently added music, because you can now exclude that playlist.
MoveTunes also now includes an option to copy the original track to a MoveTunes Removed playlist. This greatly improves performance, because now MoveTunes does not need to have iTunes remove each move track individually, which takes time with larger libraries. Instead, you can delete all the tracks from that playlist when MoveTunes is done, by selecting them all and then hitting command-option-delete.
This update fixes critical issues and also helps to improve security. It includes fixes for vulnerabilities that an attacker can use to overwrite the contents of your computer's memory with malicious code.
We're just joking about that last one. (Version histories for Microsoft Office for some reason say that every time...) But other minor under-the-hood improvements were also made. Please see the version history for details, as usual.
Friday, May 27, 2011
OmniGrowl update further improves iTunes artwork and more
OmniGrowl 4.3.3, released today, adds further improvements to iTunes artwork handling.
First, the feature to add artwork found on the internet to the iTunes album has been fixed. It has been broken since iTunes 10.2.
Second, OmniGrowl will now show separate artwork for each track of an album under specific conditions. Normally, OmniGrowl only checks artwork once per album in order to reduce the drain on iTunes.
OmniGrowl has updated Growl to 1.2.2 under the hood, and now includes the Growl installer, so it can either update Growl or install it when not present.
As usual, please see the version history for details.
First, the feature to add artwork found on the internet to the iTunes album has been fixed. It has been broken since iTunes 10.2.
Second, OmniGrowl will now show separate artwork for each track of an album under specific conditions. Normally, OmniGrowl only checks artwork once per album in order to reduce the drain on iTunes.
OmniGrowl has updated Growl to 1.2.2 under the hood, and now includes the Growl installer, so it can either update Growl or install it when not present.
As usual, please see the version history for details.
Monday, April 11, 2011
Apologies for Support MIA
The past month have brought some big (little) changes to the home front of Wooden Brain Concepts. A newborn boy is now part of the team!
As a result, some support inquiries have gone unanswered. On top of this, we lost some email during this period due to database corruption.
As we strive to answer support emails in as timely a fashion as possible, we apologize for this.
If you have contacted support during the past month and have not yet received a reply, please send your query again.
Thanks for your understanding.
As a result, some support inquiries have gone unanswered. On top of this, we lost some email during this period due to database corruption.
As we strive to answer support emails in as timely a fashion as possible, we apologize for this.
If you have contacted support during the past month and have not yet received a reply, please send your query again.
Thanks for your understanding.
Sunday, February 27, 2011
HomeBuyDB updated to version 1.3
Spring is, thankfully, finally upon us!
With it comes the house-hunting season. If you've been considering buying a new home while it's still a buyer's market, you will be interested in HomeBuyDB.
HomeBuyDB gives you the tools to make sound decisions about which home to buy at what price. These are the tools that realtors like to keep to themselves!
It has now been updated for compatibility with newer versions of Mac OS X and integration with iCal and Safari. Please see the version history for details.
With it comes the house-hunting season. If you've been considering buying a new home while it's still a buyer's market, you will be interested in HomeBuyDB.
HomeBuyDB gives you the tools to make sound decisions about which home to buy at what price. These are the tools that realtors like to keep to themselves!
It has now been updated for compatibility with newer versions of Mac OS X and integration with iCal and Safari. Please see the version history for details.
Thursday, February 24, 2011
Another big update to OmniGrowl plus notes on MobileMe
WBC today released another major update to OmniGrowl, introducing some great new features.
OmniGrowl has always provided notifications for to-dos due tomorrow or today. OmniGrowl 4.3 now allows for daily notifications of pending to-dos in iCal, up to 60 days out. OmniGrowl will tell you how many days you have left before the due date. These daily notifications do not stay on screen by default, but you can make all to-do notifications stay on screen by configuring it in Growl if you prefer.
OmniGrowl 4.3 adds a new source for concert notifications, bandsintown. Bandsintown is nice because it can, optionally, get your location from just your IP. There's also the option to get it from your city and state or country. Pollstar notifications are fixed again, hopefully for some time yet to come.
A great new feature has been added that allows you to add recently found concerts and events to iCal. This is available from a button on the Music tab and from the Tools menu.
Holiday greeting notifications have been significantly reworked and expanded. Holidays that fall on the nth weekday of a month, like Mother's Day or Thanksgiving, are now supported. There's now the option to completely turn them off in OmniGrowl. Also if you're in the U.S. you can specify whether you prefer more secular or liberal holiday greetings or not. Please make sure your country is set.
Other existing features have also been fixed or improved. Please see the version history for complete details.
In related news, Apple announced yesterday by-email that all MobileMe users will be required to upgrade to the new MobileMe calendars by May 5, 2011.
What does this mean for OmniGrowl users? OmniGrowl has supported the new calendars since January 1, 2011 with version 4.1. However there's one big outstanding problem: MobileMe sync does not currently automatically update changes to the new calendars until iCal is open. This means that if you add or change an event on the MobileMe web page, another computer, or an iPhone, OmniGrowl won't know about that change until you start iCal.
You can always set OmniGrowl to launch iCal when it starts. But since Leopard you didn't need to and now you do.
If you're not happy with this situation, please send feedback to MobileMe.
OmniGrowl has always provided notifications for to-dos due tomorrow or today. OmniGrowl 4.3 now allows for daily notifications of pending to-dos in iCal, up to 60 days out. OmniGrowl will tell you how many days you have left before the due date. These daily notifications do not stay on screen by default, but you can make all to-do notifications stay on screen by configuring it in Growl if you prefer.
OmniGrowl 4.3 adds a new source for concert notifications, bandsintown. Bandsintown is nice because it can, optionally, get your location from just your IP. There's also the option to get it from your city and state or country. Pollstar notifications are fixed again, hopefully for some time yet to come.
A great new feature has been added that allows you to add recently found concerts and events to iCal. This is available from a button on the Music tab and from the Tools menu.
Holiday greeting notifications have been significantly reworked and expanded. Holidays that fall on the nth weekday of a month, like Mother's Day or Thanksgiving, are now supported. There's now the option to completely turn them off in OmniGrowl. Also if you're in the U.S. you can specify whether you prefer more secular or liberal holiday greetings or not. Please make sure your country is set.
Other existing features have also been fixed or improved. Please see the version history for complete details.
In related news, Apple announced yesterday by-email that all MobileMe users will be required to upgrade to the new MobileMe calendars by May 5, 2011.
What does this mean for OmniGrowl users? OmniGrowl has supported the new calendars since January 1, 2011 with version 4.1. However there's one big outstanding problem: MobileMe sync does not currently automatically update changes to the new calendars until iCal is open. This means that if you add or change an event on the MobileMe web page, another computer, or an iPhone, OmniGrowl won't know about that change until you start iCal.
You can always set OmniGrowl to launch iCal when it starts. But since Leopard you didn't need to and now you do.
If you're not happy with this situation, please send feedback to MobileMe.
Monday, February 14, 2011
OmniGrowl 4.2 brings back traffic and more
OmniGrowl 4.2 has been released.
With this release, OmniGrowl moves from Yahoo Traffic, which has been defunct for months, to MapQuest traffic, for U.S. only traffic alerts.
MapQuest traffic alerts are not only more reliable, but each one is given a date and time range, which you can choose to display or not. You can also set a radius around your zip code for traffic alerts. Afternoon traffic alerts are now also consistently given.
This release also fixes an issue where Woot, MacZot, and OED Word of the Day daily notifications would not be shown on successive days after the first launch. (Thanks to one of our crack beta testers for pointing this out!)
Finally, this release further improves custom iTunes full notifications.
As usual, please see the version history for details.
With this release, OmniGrowl moves from Yahoo Traffic, which has been defunct for months, to MapQuest traffic, for U.S. only traffic alerts.
MapQuest traffic alerts are not only more reliable, but each one is given a date and time range, which you can choose to display or not. You can also set a radius around your zip code for traffic alerts. Afternoon traffic alerts are now also consistently given.
This release also fixes an issue where Woot, MacZot, and OED Word of the Day daily notifications would not be shown on successive days after the first launch. (Thanks to one of our crack beta testers for pointing this out!)
Finally, this release further improves custom iTunes full notifications.
As usual, please see the version history for details.
Wednesday, February 2, 2011
OmniGrowl 4.1.2 released, supporting authenticated RSS feeds
OmniGrowl 4.1.2 has been released.
At the request in particular of Basecamp users, OmniGrowl now supports authenticated RSS feeds in the form of https://u:p@url.
This release fixes OED Word of the Day and Flight Status formatting.
It also includes a number of improvements to iTunes custom notification display formats and local album artwork handling.
As usual, please see the version history for details.
At the request in particular of Basecamp users, OmniGrowl now supports authenticated RSS feeds in the form of https://u:p@url.
This release fixes OED Word of the Day and Flight Status formatting.
It also includes a number of improvements to iTunes custom notification display formats and local album artwork handling.
As usual, please see the version history for details.
Sunday, January 23, 2011
iGotta MP3 Collection Updated
iGotta MP3 Collection, our freeware FileMaker database for iTunes, has been updated to version 2.5. It boasts a lot of new features, including these:
Revision 2.5.2 (01/28/2011):
We made two additional tweaks that we felt did not merit a new blog or twitter posting. But if you use iGotta and found the tab order on version 2.5 to be a problem, it's been fixed. A new download will get you version 2.5.2.
- Added Limit, First, Last, Bit Rate, Settings, and About buttons to track list view.
- Limit button limits current found set.
- First and Last buttons show only first or last tracks in album.
- Bit Rate searches for bit rates lower than user-defined limit.
- Added Disc # and Disc Count fields to Track List.
- Added Grouping and Last Played dates to Track Details.
- New Settings layout.
- New Internet Search function with defined and custom search URLs.
- Support for dnuos when installed.
- General layout clean-up, including adding tool tips when appropriate.
- Updated WBC logos and URLs to newer versions.
- Updated match field and playlist export directions layouts.
Revision 2.5.2 (01/28/2011):
We made two additional tweaks that we felt did not merit a new blog or twitter posting. But if you use iGotta and found the tab order on version 2.5 to be a problem, it's been fixed. A new download will get you version 2.5.2.
- Fixed the tab order on both the track list and track detail screens.
- Cleaned up the primary & related file table and file names.
Saturday, January 1, 2011
New Year's Day Release for OmniGrowl
To mark the New Year, fighting off a hangover, WBC today releases a major update to OmniGrowl.
OmniGrowl now supports the new MobileMe calendars, and other CalDav calendars as well. If you have switched to the new MobileMe calendars and have kept local copies, you'll want to make sure that either the local calendars or the MobileMe calendars are disabled in iCal so that you don't see duplicate notifications.
Also, by popular request, same-day event notifications are now given by default for all day events, including birthdays and custom dates from Address Book, birthdays in iCal, and Yahoo Upcoming events. Previously, OmniGrowl showed notifications for all-day events 1 week, 3 days, and the day before they occurred. If you prefer the old way, you can uncheck the option for "also on the day of event" underneath the clock on the Personal tab.
There are a few other under-the-hood changes as well, so as always, please check the version history.
OmniGrowl now supports the new MobileMe calendars, and other CalDav calendars as well. If you have switched to the new MobileMe calendars and have kept local copies, you'll want to make sure that either the local calendars or the MobileMe calendars are disabled in iCal so that you don't see duplicate notifications.
Also, by popular request, same-day event notifications are now given by default for all day events, including birthdays and custom dates from Address Book, birthdays in iCal, and Yahoo Upcoming events. Previously, OmniGrowl showed notifications for all-day events 1 week, 3 days, and the day before they occurred. If you prefer the old way, you can uncheck the option for "also on the day of event" underneath the clock on the Personal tab.
There are a few other under-the-hood changes as well, so as always, please check the version history.
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