Of the many new features in iTunes 7, one stands out for me. iTunes is now able to fetch missing CD cover arts for you … free.

This is one feature I didn’t think Apple would put in. Think about it, the Get Album Art feature essentially eliminates an incentive for buying from iTunes Music Store over buying the CD and ripping it. Fortunately for us, Apple thinks in the long term and is making the best even better.

As a user, I love this new feature. As the author of SizzlingKeys, I’m glad I have been putting off the addition of such a feature in SizzlingKeys! That effort would have gone straight down the drain had I started working on it to match some of the competition (Synergy, for instance).

http://www.apple.com/itunes/overview/

We released EasyCrop 2.1 this morning. We’ve added a much-requested feature: sharpening!

A checkbox and slider for sharpening now appears just below the scale slider.

Without sharpening:

And with moderate sharpening:

Download EasyCrop now.

Macworld editor Dan Frakes wrote a nice review of FileChute, giving it 4 mice. Ever since the article was published on their website several weeks ago, I have been anxiously waiting to see it in print.

The September 2006 issue of Macworld arrived in my mailbox today. Naturally, the first thing I did was flipped to page 36 for this month’s Gems - and there it was! This is the most mainstream press coverage we’ve had since EasyFrame was chosen as MacAddict’s Shareware Pick of the Month for February 2005. This is a very exciting time for us here at Yellow Mug!

Parallels, Inc. today announced the release of Parallels Desktop and the conclusion of its Beta program.

I have been using Parallels Desktop since an early beta. The product has gone through several updates since and is now very stable and reasonably polished.

I use Desktop to run a virtual Linux box on my Mac mini with Core Duo. Since the virtual computer has its own IP address, it looks just like any headless Linux box over the network. And when I need to interact with it directly, I can do so without having to attach a monitor and keyboard like I would have to with a real headless PC.

When I finish migrating the functions of my two headless Linux boxes (cvs, J2EE, Oracle etc) to this virtual computer, they will be shut down for good.

Google released a new version of Google Earth yesterday.

If you haven’t played with Google Earth, this is the time to get it. To someone who hasn’t seen Google Earth, I think it is best described as Google Maps on steroid (and if you haven’t tried the latter, it’s like MapQuest on steroids).

There are two things worth noting about this release. The Mac OS X version of the app was released simultaneously with the Windows (and Linux) version. And secondly, Google Earth on Mac OS X is now a Universal Binary. To me this signifies Google’s commitment to the Mac platform.