Kindle for Mac also offers e-reader features, so you can access all of your e-book purchases, download and read them right on your computer. It’ll also sync the furthest location read with all Kindle devices registered to your account if you want, so that you can continue reading on your Kindle, iPhone or Mac without missing a beat.

Not yet present in the current version of the software is the ability to make and edit notes, highlight portions of the text and conduct full-text searches, but these are all planned for a later update, according to Amazon. Future versions will also let you click on images to zoom in to see a larger version, and to rotate it if you wish. One feature that is present is the conveniently-placed “Buy a Kindle” link found in the Help menu. Subtle, Amazon.

The application also lets you manage your Kindle and make purchases in the Kindle store, although for both of these functions it actually just kicks you over to Amazon’s web site in your default browser. In fact, the Mac software really isn’t much more than a bare-bones e-reading application. Not that that’s a bad thing, but I’m wondering why exactly it took this long to get the software out there.

The answer is probably that Amazon didn’t really have a good enough reason to until the iPad came along. Up until that point, drawing a link between a free iPhone app and a free Mac app to display content that Amazon was originally taking a loss on selling didn’t make much sense. The Kindle itself — the hardware — was the key to success, and it’s pretty easy to chuck that altogether when you’ve got the other two.

Amazon must’ve seen the writing on the wall following the iPad announcement, and realized that joining the company would be considerably more productive than attempting to beat it at this point, and so decided to cover all Mac-based platforms instead of just partially serving Apple customers. Will it pay off in the long run? We’ll have to wait and see how well Apple tolerates iBookstore competitors when the iPad hits store shelves early next month.

Related GigaOM Pro Research (sub req’d): Evolution of the e-Book Market

That includes OmmWriter, a new writing application for the Mac. It promises a very unique experience, one that aims to reduce distraction and enable you to maintain your focus. Part of that strategy is full-screen text editing, which has been done before, but that’s only the beginning of OmmWriter’s story.

The other part of the story? A snow-covered field, white-out conditions, and a couple of lonely looking trees. And a soundtrack of calming, ambient instrumental music. I was watching “Glee” when I tried the app out for the first time, so I initially thought a musical number was starting up, but then I realized that the sounds were coming from my computer speakers. I can honestly say it’s the first time a word processor has played me music.

When you first boot up OmmWriter, it displays a splash screen that lets you know that it’s best to experience the program using headphones for a more immersive effect. I dutifully followed the instructions using my Apple in-ear headphones, and sure enough, I felt more like I was lost in a world of composition.

If you’re not keen on the default backdrop and music, you can change both. Two other backdrops are available, including a fabric pattern, and a completely white one. Both are preferable to the field image in my opinion, since they have no real focal point to distract the eye. There are also seven different background soundtracks to choose from. OmmWriter remembers your choice, too, so you won’t have to reconfigure your work space with every boot.

I know what you’re thinking. OmmWriter sounds weird. And it is, but it’s also different. Unique, in fact. It’s rare to come across a word processor at this stage that can make the same claim. I really recommend giving it a shot, even if you’re skeptical after reading this. You may just find it’s exactly what you need to stay on track and write something great.

OmmWriter is currently available as a free beta, though you’ll have to sign up at the site with your email address to get the download link.

Has OmmWriter helped improve your focus?

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Twitt is a new, lightweight Mac Twitter client that has some interesting features I haven’t yet found elsewhere. Can it compete with perennial favorites Tweetie and TweetDeck, though? Using both those programs regularly has set my expectations fairly high, but Twitt definitely counts some surprising twists among its repertoire.

Good Things

Twitt displays your Twitter stream like an iChat conversation. It’s an interface that’s familiar to Mac users, and it fully supports themes, including user-generated ones. It comes with two, the default iChat style and an iPhone theme that is much darker. I still prefer the look of Tweetie overall, but having options is always nice, and some users will value it over other UI considerations.

I also like that there’s a compose window at the bottom, which you can optionally hide. It’s preferable to me to always have a field for posting in view, since I find it actually makes me much more likely to actually tweet on a regular basis, something which I find myself doing less and less of since I started using Tweetie as my main Twitter workhorse.

Filters is another thing Twitt has going for it. The app allows you, via a preference panel, to specify terms that Twitt will then look for in your stream. It’ll then automatically hide tweets containing said keywords, effectively enabling you to filter out annoying trending topics or ongoing conversations you aren’t particularly interested in.

Not So Good Things

I’m hesitant to say “bad things,” because none of Twitt’s features are set in stone, and these can still be changed in later editions, but as it stands, there are a few failings the program has mean I won’t be changing horses anytime soon.

First of all, Twitt only supports one account at a time. That’s good news for people who want to keep things simple, I suppose, but if you have more than one Twitter account to monitor or manage, you’re out of luck with Twitt. For my line of work, that’s a dealbreaker. You can log out of your current account and sign in with another easy enough, but why bother when other clients offer much simpler account switching mechanisms.

Second, there isn’t any mechanism for in-line viewing of conversations that I can find. Nor is there a means to view profiles, follow, or do any of the other fun stuff that I’ve come to expect after using Tweetie and TweetDeck for so long. Without these features, I’m afraid Twitt will remain little more than a quaint alternative for Twitter amateurs, instead of a fully-fledged professional tool.

Conclusion

If you’re using Twitter as more of an IM client and less of an RSS replacement and/or brand management outlet, then there’s definitely something to be said for Twitt’s simplistic approach. Things work as you’d expect them to in an IM client. Clicking on someone’s portrait enters their username into the compose field, so that you’re automatically having a conversation with that person. Ongoing conversations between others are highlighted (orange, by default) and stand out from the rest of your stream.

For my purposes, and I suspect for a lot of other web workers, Twitt just isn’t powerful enough to play with the big boys. But it does have the advantage of being free and easy to learn if you’re just starting out. Once you get your sea legs, however, I highly recommend stepping up to Tweetie or TweetDeck.

Which desktop Twitter client are you using, and why?

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1. Shoeboxed. Organize your receipts and business cards through this service (see our review here). With the web app, you scan in what you want to save and organize or mail in your “shoebox” of items to scan and let Shoeboxed do it for you. The results are searchable and easy to organize. With the iPhone app, you can take a photo to digitize a receipt or card.
2. Evernote. The Evernote browser bookmarklet makes it easy to save all or portions of a web page to categorize content and images (see our review here). The Evenote iPhone app lets you do the same with a snap of your iPhone camera, create notes and record audio memos.
3. Bento. If you’re using the personal FileMaker Pro application (see our review here), you might want to try the iPhone app which can operate as a standalone app or sync with your desktop version. You can get mobile access to your Bento libraries and collections, create new records, edit details, sort data, and modify forms.
4. Freshbooks. If you’re looking for easy invoicing, Freshbooks is a great solution (see our coverage of the app here). You can use the MiniBooks app to sync with your Freshbooks account and manage invoices, time, and other related functionality.
5. Task2Gather. Gather, manage and share your tasks, subtasks and projects for yourself and your team (see our review here). Sync the iPhone app with the free Task2Gather desktop application and manage tasks on the go.
6. SugarSync. Work in the cloud, collaborate, back up and sync important documents across all platforms and key devices with this pervasive application (see our review here). View and share files on your iPhone to keep the work flowing, even if you’re not near your computer.
7. TimeBridge.While TimeBridge sets out to be your meeting and conference call one-stop solution (see our review here), the iPhone app gives you control of your meetings while you’re traveling. Call in and handle business on the go.

And a little something extra: Starbucks has not one but two iPhone apps, so you can find the Starbucks nearest you and even build a perfect drink that you can share with friends. Then use your iPhone and the Starbucks Card Mobile to pay for your java (in selected stores) and manage your account. I’ll take my cuppa joe with extra cream, please.

What is your favorite web application with a companion iPhone app, and why?

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doubleTwist already offers the ability to sync with pretty much any device, instead of just your standard Apple i-devices. And with Amazon support, there’s little reason for many to venture back to iTunes, especially since Amazon’s prices are often better than those found in Apple’s own online store.

It wasn’t too long ago that doubleTwist’s “DVD” Jon Johansen was taking flack from BART for buying legit advertising space at a very conspicuous location, and then using it to promote the iTunes competitor. With the introduction of the Amazon store, we should see that competition heat up even further.

The new Music Store looks like a very stripped-down iTunes store, and though it isn’t as fancy as Apple’s, it is clean and functional, and it doesn’t cause the program to occasionally fail, as iTunes has been known to do. It pales in comparison to the iTunes store in terms of navigation options, though, with a search bar and two small Top Albums and Top Songs lists providing your only means of browsing the Amazon catalog.

The main advantage, of course, comes for people who don’t own an iPod or iPhone (some really do exist, honest). Plug in your BlackBerry, PSP, Android phone, and any number of other supported devices, and you can immediately copy over your purchased media. You miss out on Genius playlists and other iTunes niceties, but if you don’t have an iPod, that probably isn’t an issue anyway.

It may be a small step towards making doubleTwist a full-fledged competitor to iTunes, but having a major player like Amazon onboard is nothing to sneeze at. Ideally, the next step for DVD Jon and his open alternative for the i-device deficient would be to form a partnership with major video media distributors, especially given that doubleTwist automatically converts video when it syncs to most major devices, including the PSP and the Palm Pre.

In fact, Palm could do far worse than doubleTwist in an official partnership to provide its users a dedicated software solution for syncing media instead of continuing to play leapfrog with Apple over iTunes. I’m sure something could be arranged, so long as Palm agreed to keep the software open to other devices as well.

For now, the Amazon store is only available for the OS X version of doubleTwist, but a Windows version is coming soon. You must have an Amazon.com account with a registered payment method in order to use the service.

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Picasa web users will recognize the “new” features for the desktop version, which haven’t previously been available on locally installed instances of Picasa in the past. They include face recognition, which Picasa calls “Name Tags,” and support for geotagged photos with location data.

With Name Tags, Picasa will analyze your photos and group them according to faces it find in them, at which point you’re able to assign names to these faces, and then search your library based on people you’ve tagged. If it sounds like Faces in iPhoto ’09, that’s because it is, with the exception that when signed into your Gmail account with the app, Picasa will offer auto-complete suggestions of names you start typing.

Google also baked-in location support in Picasa 3.5, which resembles iPhoto ’09′s Places organizational feature. That means photos with embedded geotagging EXIF data, like those taken with the iPhone’s built-in camera, or using an Eye-Fi Geo card, can be optionally displayed on a map in Picasa 3.5. If you’ve taken your photos without embedded location information, you can simply drag them to the appropriate location on a built-in Google map to achieve the same effect.

Version 3.5 also brings an improved importing process, so that you can star your favorite shots, upload to the web, and share with your Google contacts all in one fell swoop. Tagging is also better than it was before, with better batch tagging, quick tags, and tag counts for image groups.

If you’re looking for an alternative to iPhoto, and you’re already very plugged into Google via its various personal information management apps, Picasa is a good choice. It isn’t much of a resource hog, it’s very good at combing and organizing your computer’s image files without much intervention on your part, and it plugs into your existing Google account information to fill in a lot of blanks. If I weren’t a MobileMe user (which I might not be for long after yesterday’s announcement), I’d definitely consider using Picasa as my full-time solution.

Picasa 3.5 is available now for Mac and PC, though not for Linux, and it’s an English-only download. It’s completely free, which is something iPhoto ’09 is not, if you haven’t purchased a new Mac lately.

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When we took it out for a test drive, we found that it’s made huge strides over the previous version when it comes to replicating what the full Facebook user experience is like. Not only can you view and RSVP to events, but the Like function is now available. Still, we hope the next version will let us create an event and invite friends directly from our iPhones.

But one of the best new features is the ability to send texts and call your Facebook friends directly from the app, a functionality that’s been in the works for awhile. Not only is the address book integration handy, but it brings Facebook closer to mirroring real-world relationships, just as Liz predicted it would more than a year ago.

While iPhone users can now create and upload photos directly to the app, the time it takes to thumb through friends’ photo albums was still a bit long because it took a few seconds for the photos to load each time.

Overall, the less-cluttered user interface makes it easier to quickly navigate around the app. Though it’s still missing some functions, this app is a notable improvement from the previous version. Readers, what do you think of it? Please share your reviews in the comments section.

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Similar to other network apps, the Discovery Channel app allows users to browse select shows from the network and play clips directly on their iPhone. Note that these are merely clips and not actual episodes. Whether this is due to bandwidth concerns or content restrictions is unknown, but Discovery is certainly not the first company to do this.

Users can take their viewing experience to the next level by interacting through quizzes on topics and shows, learning more about show cast and other info, and see a schedule of TV air times. Other interactive aspects of the app include the ability to watch the “most viewed clips” or jump directly to the iTunes Store to buy your favorite episodes.

Currently, the shows featured inside the app only amount to a little less than half of the entire Discovery lineup, but the future potential for this app is limitless. Discovery Communications, the parent company of The Discovery Channel, has a diverse collection of other properties, and I would expect to see apps for their other networks, like Animal Planet, The Science Channel, TLC or Planet Green.

If you’ve had a chance to try out the Discovery Channel app, I’d love to hear your thoughts.

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They’ve also added some new core functionality and optimized the backend. To me, this feels like more than a 0.01 update. With every update of Sequel Pro, the open-source project continues to close the gap between itself and commercial competitors such as Querious.

New Features

Sequel Pro now includes full SSH tunnel support built into the connection manager (which has also got a UI facelift).

There is a new Relations screen that lets you view and edit foreign keys for a table.

Enhancements

By far one of my favorite new enhancements is the ability to filter the database’s table list. When the list gets larger than the displayed area, a filter box appears at the top, enabling you to quickly find the one you’re looking for. I’ve been using this a lot already.

When running custom queries, the results used to be presented in a static table. Now you can sort the results on the fly by clicking the column titles. Even better, for supported queries you can edit the results directly.

Browser-like table history navigation has been added, allowing you to go back to previous table views, which is great for flicking back and forth.

Significant Update

There are also plenty of smaller enhancements. Another favorite is the ability to select a record (either in the content view or after running a custom query) and then select “Copy As INSERT Statement”. This is so handy, I don’t know why it wasn’t there before. There are plenty of small changes like this, and almost every part of the application has had numerous bugs fixed.

In addition to all the new features, enhancements and fixes, this release is significantly snappier, and very noticeably so. The memory overhead is also greatly reduced. The developers have done some serious optimizing, and the results have paid off. See the full release notes for Sequel Pro 0.96 for a complete list of changes since 0.95.

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At first, I thought this sounded like only half an idea. There are already some great Twitter clients in the Mac software space, most of which have integrated search functions built right in, so how does Incoming! carve out a niche by offering search alone? What I found out was that depending on your Twitter habits, it might actually be the only app you need.

What it offers is a very robust search manager, well above and beyond what the average built-in Twitter search in other clients provide. You can filter results by matching exact phrases, finding any or all of multiple terms, or by exclusionary keywords (so that I can search for “Apple” but exclude “Pie,” for instance). You can even specify positive or negative attitudes (which just searches for a smiley or frowny emoticon, but it works), or specify that you want only questions.

The interface also provides lots of options for filtering your tweets and navigating between searches and trending topics. On the left, your searches appear in the sidebar, and are only removed when you click the “Remove Search” button. Below that list is a pane containing trends. Double-clicking on any trending term will automatically create a search for said term. On the right you have your list of results and the actual tweet-viewing window. You can filter results by influence, username, following/follower count, updates and date.

At no point during any of this do you log into your Twitter account or post any tweets of your own. Some users will no doubt find this bothersome, and question the app’s usefulness, but if you use Twitter for research as much as I do, the arm’s length passivity of Incoming! is just what the doctor ordered. It might also appeal to people who don’t yet want to take the Twitter plunge themselves by signing up for an account, but want access to all the content that’s available via the service, in a much more manageable package than Twitter.com’s own search page.

For those who absolutely need to reply and retweet, you still can; Incoming! just opens the native Twitter web interface to allow you to do so. The application also has some nice extras, like allowing you to export your results to a CSV database file format, providing “Translate” and “Translate All” options, and allowing you to instantly see all of the links and images your search has returned taken out of their individual tweets. It’s the closest thing to a Google for Twitter I’ve yet come across.

The software is currently in beta, which I think explains why the auto-refresh function wasn’t working for me. It’s free, so long as you only want to run three searches at once. Registration removes the search limit cap, and costs $14 while the beta is on, or $24 after that.

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