It turns out that in my Mindcamp article I mixed up the names of TWO apps I used to cleanse my mp3 collection.  Thanks to a reader for pointing that out.  I figured I could only do right by re-writing and linking to the proper names (The reader found me in a Google search where my incorrect name is the only result… )

EatMyBrainz is ACTUALLY iEatBrainz.

ArtFetch is ACTUALLY Fetch Art.

Today, MacZot is having a contest to give away AppZapper. For every blog post about this, the price goes down by $0.05. At the time of this post, the price was $9.30. I bought AppZapper in the Friends and Family pack the other day and absolutely love it. Yeah, I could do the app name searching that it does myself, but why? This app is so slick and amazing. The time it saves me was worth the price I paid. It’s one of those apps that is few and far between that does one small simple thing so damned well that you just drop your jaw.

So, you need to do two things if you have a Mac:
1) Write a blog post about this and put in the comments over at MacZot (link below)
2) Send an email to them after it is free (details below)

From their site:

For each blog that posts a link to MacZOT.com, they’ll drop the price for everybody by $0.05 (Blog links should be posted to the Comment section at http://maczot.com/discuss/?p=35#comments

Our goal is to give away 1,000 copies of AppZapper to Mac users around the world. So, every Blog entry will be worth about $50.00 to the community.

Once they reach at least 259, AppZapper will be priced at $0.00 (FREE) to everybody who registers at MacZOT.com or sends a simple email to BlogZOT@maczot.com after the time it becomes FREE.

One more note about this contest of sorts from the Mktg side of my brain. AppZapper ahs been doing a great job recently of coming up with creative ways to get the word out about their application. I have to give them huge kudos for that.

UPDATE: It seems that MacZot has been Dugg. Guess you’ll have to be a bit patient…

Above is my menubar. I realized I was relying more heavily on it and wanted to take the time to put it out there for anyone that might be helped by the utilities I find useful. from left to right:

1) Amnesty - An application that lets you run widgets out of the context of Dashboard. You can set up opacity, rotation, and more. I’m stil starting to get used to it, so i can’t say much mroe about it; however, it looks like there are some really handy things available in regards to groupins, etc.

2) Skype - If you don’t use this, you should. Free Internet telephony that works. I have a VM box and a SkypeOut number. I’ve said before how I don’t have a cell phone plan or a home phone (I have a pre-paid cell). I can do this because of Skype.

3) Adium - Multi agent chat. When I converted from PC, this was a crucial replacement to Trillian. It supports Growl and is customizable. Jabber, GChat, AIM, MSN, Y! and more.

4) iClip - Mulitple clipboard and scrapbooking application. Great for storing snippets of information. I was lucky enough to get this in the 2nd MysteryZot. Drag, drop, and store information at the touch of a buton.

5) Menuet - I got this in the same MysteryZot. I love it! It let me setup hot keys for controlling iTunes. One hit rating and track control. It also has Growl interaction to let m eknow the current song when it comes on.

6) Textpander - This app sits in the menubar and watched what you type. You can set up abreviations nad it will auto correct your typing for you. Windows users - think Active Words. I mistype lots of words and this saves me TONS of time. I also have a bunch of URLS that I type often in forms that I have abbreviations for.

7) Nuevos - This was started as Huevos by Brent Simmons of Ranchero (makers of NetNewsWire). It is a hotkey activated search box. You can have different hotkeys for different searches. I use Google and PHP.net a lot and can hit this tiny box up from anywhere so I don’t need to load a browser up first.

8) Growl - Sweet program that pops up toast to whatever I want it to from the apps I run that interface with it (Skype, Colloquy, Adium, Menuet, and Transmission). You can define which apps and which triggers in those apps pop toast. It’s a must for anyone who is absolutley annoyed by those dancing dock icons.

9-15) Mac OS X System options: Airport Express, Volume, Bluetooth, VPN, International Support (I use this to easily input characters like the Euro), and Sync status.

16) MenuCalendarClock - There are hacks that let you get the date in the format you want in the menubar clock, but this is my favorite app to do it. If you pay the registration fee, you can get access to your iCal calendars (including tasks) from this little app as well. Right now, I’m just using it for better clock display.

17) Spotlight - I use it infrequently and may replace it with Quicksilver again. I just didn’t have the time to properly train QS before and gave up on it. I think its time to give it another shot, as Spotlight is so bloody frigging slow it pains me.

MarsEdit by Ranchero Software is my personal choice for app of the week. I just downloaded the trial today, but it already is coming in very handy.

It is a local OS X blog posting tool. I can craft blog entries offline and then get them posted once I hit an Internet connection. Given my commute, I have a lot of disconnected time that I can use, and now I have another thing to do with that time. It also has rocking integration with NetNewsWire (go figure, since that is written by Ranchero as well…) Now, if I see something in my daily RSS troll, I can one click start a draft; finish the post, and save for later upload.

Described in their words:

MarsEdit is a weblog editor for Mac OS X that makes weblog writing like writing email—with spell-checking, drafts, multiple windows, and even AppleScript support.It works with various weblog systems: Blosxom, Conversant, Manila, Movable Type, Radio UserLand, TypePad, WordPress, and others.

There are a few things that would be nice additions:
1) Access to tag my posts with support for Ultimate Tag Warrior
2) Categories. This is a no brainer and almost seems like a huge oversight. I can only post to the main category, and then have to go back to teh blog to edit it later. (EDITED: See comments below - I just hadn’t explored deeply enough - my bad!)