Do you often find yourself bookmarking pages then plain forgetting about them? It happens to me all the time, as I’m left with a stack of websites I’ve mostly forgotten about in my bookmarks menu whenever I open it. And by now I’m afraid to see how much has piled up in my Instapaper account as well. I’d delete all these bookmarks but many still seem to be relevant, like a snippet of code or a forum post I’d have trouble googling in the future. It’d be nice if there was a way I could avoid forgetting about them without going through each one by one.

Enter Elephant, a simple little app by Julian Meinold. As the title of this post implies, it’s like a StumbleUpon for your bookmarks. The interface couldn’t get any simpler. There is one button. Click on it and Elephant randomly opens up one of your Safari bookmarks in a new window. The developer describes it as being like randomly zapping through TV channels. The app might even be a bit too simple, as you can’t filter certain folders and Safari is the only browser supported. Nevertheless, I’ve found it useful for digging up old memories. It’s only a 25K download so give Elephant a try and see what you find hidden within your bookmarks. Download it here.

No related posts.

We all love a good deal. Especially when that includes a load of Mac applications all bundled up for heft of savings. Over the years there have been many app bundle sales, most prominently by MacHeist, which has inspired the likes of other sales like One Finger Discount. In this article, we will cover three sales of app bundles going on this March.

theMacSale

TheMacSale bundle has a collection of 10 apps for $49.99, claiming that their combined worth is over $500. Among the apps are gems such as Path Finder and Shovebox—both apps that anyone can find use for on a day-to-day basis. Path Finder is a Finder replacement, and Shovebox an information snippet organizer that’s iPhone sync capable; they’re included below in the list with the others:

• Path Finder – a replacement for the Finder ($39.95)
• Shovebox – an information snippet organizer ($24.95)
• Supercard – a quick and easy development environment ($179.00)
• StoryMill – a word processor that’s specially suited for story writing ($49.95)
• MiniOne Racing – a three dimensional kart racing game ($19.95)
• Inkbook – note-taking software with handwriting recognition ($40.00)
• VideoConverter Pro – a video and audio converter, and DVD ripper ($49.00)
• Slideshow – make slideshows as standalone apps for Mac, Windows, Flash, etc. ($55.00)
• MacGourmet Deluxe – organize your recipe and wine collection in a database ($49.95)
• Finance 6 – a way to keep track of your bank accounts and manage your budget ($40.00)

Summing up the individual costs for licenses, you get a total of $547.75—upholding the claim and totalling exactly $497.76 in savings. The whole thing seems to be organized by (or at least collaborated with) macZOT, and you can save an additional 5% by entering in their coupon code “MACZOTROCKS” that would bring down the cost of theMacSale bundle to $47.49. That’s a savings of 90.46%.

Edit 1: The date to purchase this bundle by has now been set at March 15.

MacHeist

MacHeist is a well-known name in the Mac community that spawned the whole bundled apps phenomenon. They often hold sales like this one and usually have a range of high-quality apps included in their bundles. This time ’round they offer a collection of 5 apps for just $19.95, and two additional apps that will be unlocked for all purchasers once they reach the sales quotas. They claim a combined app worth of over $260 on their homepage, and they are:

• MacJournal – journal writing with encryption support ($39.95)
• RipIt – a simple DVD ripper ($19.95)
• Clips – clipboard organizer: think Pastebot for the Mac (€19.99)
• CoverScout – add the album covers to your iTunes library ($39.95)
• Flow – an elegant FTP client ($25.00)
• Tales of Monkey Island – a pirate adventure game, unlocked after quota ($34.95)
• RapidWeaver – website creation and publication, unlocked after quota ($79.00)

As of March 3rd €19.99 is just over US$27, so added together the apps total to about $266.05. While their claimed combined app worth of over $260 is correct, it’s worth noting that the last two apps only unlock after sales quotas are reached. This brings the total app worth down to just $152.10, but for a still impressive savings of 86.88%. Once all the apps are unlocked, the savings jump to 92.5%. The MacHeist sale only lasts ’till March 11, and the quota to unlock Tales of Monkey Island RapidWeaver is 50,000 bundle purchases; it’s almost certain that both quotas will be reached in the end due to MacHeist’s popularity.

Edit 1: Looks like the MacHeist directorate have decided to make RapidWeaver unlock at 50,000 purchases, and make Tales of Monkey Island available for all purchasers immediately.

Edit 2: Three new apps were added to the bundle for just a tweet! And they are: Airburst Extreme ($19.95), Tracks (€7.99), and Burning Monkey Solitaire ($24.95).

Edit 3: Last minute addition of Tweetie ($19.95) as an unlockable.

Edit 4: Both RapidWeaver and Tweetie have been unlocked!

Edit 5: This bundle is over folks!

Macbuzzer

Last but not least is Macbuzzer—a new entrant to the bundled apps playing field. While not exactly a bundle, it does deliver individual apps for a heavily discounted price. It’s organized by the same guy who brought us Thoughts (which we gave a passing mention before) so this is on sale, along with two other apps from creativebe software, MainMenu and Sponge.

• Thoughts is a note and information manager, good for organizing ideas ($34.50)
• MainMenu is a maintenance tool to keep your Mac running like new ($20.00)
• Sponge is an app uninstaller and duplicate file deleter ($26.00)

Rucksack, a delicious-looking archive manager, is being given away free of charge to promote the bundle. The three above are 70% off and the deals only last until March 23rd. Be sure to check Macbuzzer out!

No related posts.

If your iTunes library happens to be in disarray, with incorrect ID3 tags, missing artist names and album art, then you might be happy to know that there’s an app that can add all those in for you automatically. Pollux, whilst previously free, had to be shut down because the services it used could not endure all the queries made to their servers. However, it returns today with a nominal fee of $10/year. Not bad for keeping your music library updated with the correct song, artist, album, and other metadata names, along with the lyrics and album art. A trial to tag 20 songs is available as a download on the Pollux website; feel free to try out its accuracy for yourself.

Click here to download

Related posts:

1. iPod Nano now with video, FM tuner

Anyone who has used Flash on a Mac can say that it’s more than just a nuisance. On top of the loading time Flash takes to play a video, for instance, it’s the leading source of application crashes on Mac OS X. In fact, Apple had to engineer a new plugin mechanism for Safari in Snow Leopard that would run plugins as a separate process, so if they crash, they wouldn’t crash Safari itself. In addition to that, while Safari runs as a 64-bit process, Flash still runs in 32-bit. It’s no wonder why Apple doesn’t want Flash on the iPhone and iPad.

Thankfully, the YouTube team has added an option to opt-in to viewing videos in HTML5 in lieu of Flash. (And here’s an interesting tidbit: The HTML5 editors are Ian Hickson of Google and David Hyatt of Apple—clearly someone’s not invited to the party.) You must have a modern browser to support these changes.

To enable HTML5, you must:

1. Visit this link: http://www.youtube.com/html5
2. Click on the link that says “Join the HTML5 Beta”

HTML5 in Vimeo is just as simple. Whenever you are viewing a video, click on the link at the bottom right hand corner of the screen that says, “Switch to HTML5 player” as seen in the image below. Enjoy your crisp, no wait-time video that doesn’t bog down your computer.

Related posts:

1. etc: Flash, now on the iPhone

With over 140 iPhone and Mac developers participating in Indie+Relief, exactly $143,872 dollars was raised for Haiti in just 24 hours—making it a huge success. A full list of the sold apps and participating developers are still available on their site. A special thanks to both Garrett Murray and Justin Williams, who made the whole thing possible.

No related posts.