Now there is a new way to organize your life. Put your pen and paper to rest and join the thousands of app users that have found a specific download that satisfies their needs. FourthFrame Technologies LLC has developed nine apps to simplify your daily activities and inject a little bit of fun into your day. FourthFrame is a privately held company located in central Ohio, founded in 2003 by talented veteran software developers. Its mission is to supply software talent on a contract and consulting basis and to develop exciting software products on cutting-edge platforms including mobile platforms such as iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad. "We ...

Adobe today announced the release of its new Carousel app and sharing service, available now through the iTunes App Store and the Mac App Store. Carousel promises to give users access to their entire photo library (or any portion of it) from an iPad, iPhone, iPod touch, Mac OS desktop or laptop (as long as it’s running Lion). Currently, Carousel is MacOS, iOS-only, with support for Windows and Android expected in the first half of 2012. With this collection of free apps and a cloud-based subscription service ($5.99/month or $59.99/year until Jan. 31, then going up to $9.99/$99.99) lets customers share and collaborate on a photo library ...

Circus Ponies Software, Inc. has released the latest version of the popular Circus Ponies NoteBook for iPad, its award-winning note taking and organizing application re-imagined for Multi-Touch. NoteBook for iPad combines power outlining, multi-font text editing with attachments, voice annotation so you never miss a detail, diagramming with shapes and lines, and PDF mark-up, all in a familiar “notebook” interface that helps keeping your work organized. Its patented Multidex helps you locate notes with just a couple taps, and its compatibility with the desktop NoteBook application lets you move between your iPad and Mac with ease. “ ...

Now, managing and using digital sheet music portfolios on the road or stage is as easy as tapping on the screen of an Apple iPad. Scorecerer, a desktop app from Deskew Technologies, enables users to scan their sheet music library quickly and easily into their computer and manage it with ease. An update this month to the free companion Scorecerer iPad app lets users for the first time make handwritten notations and highlights right on the screen to enhance their understanding and clarify difficult passages on the fly.

But if you are sure you carry your iPad wherever you go, Easy Chinese K1 can be a quick and easy way to learn Chinese.Chinese is written with characters which are known as 漢字 [汉字] (hànzi). The characters were originally pictures of people, animals or other things, but over the centuries they have become increasingly stylised and no longer resemble the things they represent. Many characters have been combined with others to create new ones. The Chinese writing system is an open-ended one, meaning that there is no upper limit to the number of characters. The largest Chinese dictionaries include ...

Rome, Italy – ComPart Multimedia, srl, is pleased to announce ItalyGuides: Florence Travel Guide for iPhone, the third in their series of award-winning, internationally acclaimed audio/video travel guides. ItalyGuides has sought to reinvent the stale, academic, audio guide, and replace it with a new, cinema inspired app featuring a filmic musical score, professional narration, creative scripting, and dramatic still and video images. The app guides the user through 54 different points of interest in Florence, and includes more than 200 images and maps.“These are not just ordinary travel guides, ...

Merriam-Webster's dictionary isn't the only dictionary app on the iPad, but now it might be the cheapest. How can it get so cheap (aka free) you ask? Ads. Mayhap the Webster people haven't updated the App Store screenshots yet, but I don't see any obtrusive ads in the pictures so they might be easy to ignore. Lord knows we all get enough practice doing that every day (but not for the lovely MacDirectory ads of course). When I indebted myself to the gods of journalism school, the Webster dictionary was our reference of choice. I still use its online brother today. If I had an iPad, I'd stick it on there too. You never know when you might ...

Apple has unofficially reached a milestone today, as they have now reached 500,000 approved apps in their App Store. This info comes by way of 148Apps, Chillingo, and Chomp, who have assembled a Facebook page to serve as not only a central point of information, but an easy way for everyone to celebrate. A few points to note: - 85,569 unique developers - $3.64 is the average app price - 37% of apps are free - the iDevice is still used largely for fun You can check the full timeline and infographic out for yourself here. Congratulations Apple and all the developers who work so hard to give us a wide seection of apps! [via: TUAW]

Twitter has reportedly bought TweetDeck for more than $40 million in cash and stock. That's a good chunk of change, but, if true, Twitter will have acquired one of the most robust Twitter clients on the market (and my personal favorite). TechCrunch originally reported that Twitter closed the deal at the beginning of May, and suggested that the acquisition was a defensive play by Twitter to keep UberMedia from snapping up too many companies developing popular Twitter software. While the reason for the pickup is likely true, CNNMoney reports that the papers were just signed this Monday. [CNNMoney]

Yahoo has released a new version of their iOS Messenger app for iOS that brings in support for one of the iPad 2's best features: its camera. The app will allow you to make voice and video calls using the front-facing camera, and will allow you to chat with people on any other supported platform. This brings an interesting level of competition between Yahoo and Apple's own FaceTime feature. Yahoo Messenger has a pretty wide userbase, much larger than Apple's FaceTime does, and I could easily see a lot of people choosing this over Apple's offering. [via: TUAW]

A few weeks ago, we reported that there was a new trojan released that specifically affects Macs by posing as an antivirus app. It has shown up with a variety of names, but it is primarily known as MACDefender. According to ZDNet's Ed Bott, Apple has been hit with a huge volume of calls, and over 50% of their calls last week were related to malware such as this. He discovered this information by talking to an anonymous Apple support representative who said this: There's usually about 600 or so of us spread around 14 centers for CPU support. Before this started happening, we had 7-12 minutes between calls generally. Now we're lucky to have ...

Splasm Software, the creator of Audiobook Builder has announced that they have released an updated version of their audiobook production software for Mac. The software is designed to allow you to take your audio files or audiobook CDs and turn them into audiobooks that are compatible with your iPod. In addition to placing your audiobooks in the correct place and compiling them into a single file, you are also able to group files into chapters with custom artwork, adjust the quality to your preference, and export completed work directly to the Books section in iTunes. The application is Universal but requires Mac OS X 10.4 or later. You ...

I am a sucker for software bundles. Whenever any of the companies that sell discounted bundles for less than what each individual title is worth, it can be difficult to decide if I really need the apps or not. Apparent is a less recognized player in this bundling game compared to MacUpdate or MacHeist, but they've been releasing bundles of themed software for a couple of years. This time around, they are offering software aimed at productivity that will cost you just short of $30. These titles include the following: TextExpander: TextExpander lets you use customized abbreviations to let you insert frequently-used text strings and images. ...

Adobe Systems Incorporated has announced the immediate availability of the Adobe Photoshop Touch apps, Adobe Color Lava, Adobe Eazel and Adobe Nav, or Apple iPad in the Apple App Store. These three apps from Adobe were developed using the Photoshop Touch Software Development Kit (SDK) to demonstrate the potential for new interaction between Photoshop and tablet devices. Adobe Color Lava for Photoshop, Adobe Eazel for Photoshop and Adobe Nav for Photoshop represent somewhat of a breakthrough for tablets, providing them with the ability to enhance the interface paradigms of desktop applications. These applications take advantage of the iPad�

Making money from apps meant for kids can be a tricky proposition. There's the general ickiness of marketing to kids (it's really the parents that brands want to reach), and then there's the question of whether certain ads are appropriate to flash in front of little ones. For at least one app designed for kids (or adults) to browse Pokemon on an iPhone, Apple has apparently decided the effort was not worth the risk. Mike Zornek, developer of the app in question (Dex) said he received no warning of any policy change before Apple sent him the following message after he inquired about a sudden drop in his iAd fill rate. "We periodically ...

Less than a week after bagging several Hearst magazines, Apple has now brought Conde Nast on board for its new iTunes subscription service. The New Yorker will be the first Conde Nast publication starting, well, actually it's already available. An updated version of the app is now available for download and will let iTunes subscribers receive four magazines a month for $5.99 or an annual deal that costs $60. Getting just the old-fashioned print version costs $4.99 per single issue or $69.95 a year so that's a pretty good deal. So how did Apple bring on Conde Nast? Concessions. For example, print New Yorker subscribers get automatic free ...

Apple has always had issues with accurately depicting app ratings in the app store. Previously, a prompt would show up to rate an app whenever you deleted it, which generally resulted in negative feedback for even good apps. Apple did away with that, but now they are seeking to once again improve accuracy by not allowing ratings or reviews on apps that are downloaded with a promo code. Apple has been doing a number of such modifications to their rating system lately. They have implemented a new system that only rates based on criteria such as reviews and ratings rather than just the number of downloads. [via: TUAW]