You’ve read the review. Banca is a downright beautiful currency converter for the iPhone, quickly enabling you to convert dollars to euros and australian bills with a couple swipes and a few button presses. Need to figure out how many Washingtons that swank Italian leather jacket is going to cost you? Whip out the iPhone, tap the lower Euro amount, and enter that 250 to get good ol’ USD in return. You’ve got all of the world’s currencies at your fingertips from South America to the outskirts of China, and a simple arithmetic calculator so you can quickly add up totals without having to leave the app. Beautiful, simple, customizable, and good to have on you when traveling, Banca is perhaps the most useful gadget you’ll have on your iPhone if you spend dough overseas. Banca by Radiant Tap is currently $1.99 in the App Store.

For our MacStorians, we’re giving away five copies so you too can translate currencies (like a boss) in the palm of your hand — no Google search required. Check past the break for all the details.

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Most people expect the basics: “All I need is a a good web browser, email client, and word processor.” Little by little, you get the itch to use your computer for more and more things. “I want to use my Mac for taking notes. I want to get rid of all this paper in my office and have it on my Mac. I hate Microsoft Word and need something just for print.” Given these three things, you know there has to be a bundle to maintain a practical workflow right? Well that’s why we have the Mariner Software Bundle.

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Fantastical is a calendar assistant that works with Apple’s iCal and the popular third-party BusyCal software, allowing you to quickly creates event in your default system calendar with plain English. Thanks to a built-in natural language parser, Fantastical lets you write down something like “Get a new MacBook Air tomorrow at Apple Store at 5 PM”, and see the sentence becoming a new event with all the necessary fields already filled in your calendar. And because Fantastical directly plugs into calendar accounts configured on your Mac, you won’t need to enter your information again.

Fantastical 1.0.3, released today, adds full Lion compatibility and a new Lion-only feature that allows you to swipe with two fingers to move between months in the calendar. The animation is really nice, and reminds me of Safari’s new feature for navigating webpages with a two-finger swipe on Lion. Among various bug fixes, Fantastical also adds a new color menubar icon preference, a last-selected calendar option, and several parsing engine fixes.

You can read our initial review of Fantastical here, and buy the app from the Mac App Store. However, the Flexibits developers have been kind enough to offer 10 promo codes to celebrate the next major release of OS X with MacStories readers, so if you’re interested in the giveaway jump after the break for the full details of how to enter. (more…)

Two weeks ago we reviewed Saver for iPhone, which was a new expense-tracking app for the iPhone that had just launched in the App Store. In the review, I made particular note of the design of Saver – which I feel has one the nicest user interfaces of any iPhone app I’ve used. For a task that is important (for many) but often dull and boring, Saver not only makes things a little more exciting and vibrant but it also makes it extremely easy (whilst still being fairly powerful) to accomplish various tasks such as adding an expense entry or viewing what kinds of things you spend most on.

You can read our full review of Saver here and purchase Saver on the App Store here. However, the developer of Saver has been kind enough to offer MacStories readers 3 copies of the app so we are running a giveaway. If you are interested, jump the break for the full details of how to enter.

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You don’t just like to process your inbox, you like to dominate it with open tabs, a gorgeous interface, and tagging that just works with you to empty the ol’ breadbox instead of collecting crumbs. Postbox 2.5 is a great update to an already fantastic alternative to Mail, Thunderbird, and Outlook on the Mac — you can’t do any better than that gorgeous conversation view (which carriers over to your senders), a vertical thread pane so you can overview your email quickly, or that redesigned compose screen which really makes sending messages pretty slick. There is some OmniFocus integration built in for GTDers, and the recent 64-bit upgrade makes finding messages faster than ever (easier than ever too if we count the recent improvements in Spotlight integration). Postbox is a superb email client that offers you a lot of choice in how you want to tackle email, all through a powerful, smart, and now redesigned interface. We wholeheartedly recommend Postbox to readers as an upgrade to Mail, and we recommend you to both check out Postbox on their website and download the trial. Postbox is normally $29.99 online and in the Mac App Store, and is currently on sale for $19.99.

The great folks at Postbox gave us some coupons to pass out so you can grab a free copy of Postbox, so we’re going to give away five copies to our delightful readers. Check past the break for the full rundown.

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The great thing about working at MacStories is we get exposed to a ton of brilliant applications that solidify our workflows and give us different perspectives on how to get things done. All of us have various tools that work for us, and just as we like to share our findings we occasionally tussle over our tools of choice. Any of us could get by with just the basics, but the Mac is made so much better when you come to appreciate and enjoy all the great software that’s available to us. The four of us working at MacStories put our heads together and picked out five of our favorite applications to share with you guys in hopes of loading up your summer Macs with a great selection of productive software. As you can see in the banner, we have a great lineup we’d love to share with you.

Reeder for the Mac (Up to 5 winners): Certainly we have the occasional NNW vs. Reeder clash behind the scenes, but all of us agree that Reeder is something really special for the Mac. It takes your RSS feeds and puts them in a beautiful interface that can be as minimal or expanded as you need it to be, and it works fluidly with gestures on newer Macs. My favorite feature: Readability works extremely well with linked posts, formatting the original article for Reeder without distracting web nonsense. If you love it for the iPad and iPhone, Reeder for Mac is a must have.

Notefile for iOS (Up to 3 winners): When it comes down to it, we just want an easy way to sync notes, reminders, and to-do lists between our Macs and iOS devices. Dropbox is nice, but it’s not as automatic as Junecloud’s Notefile. You’d think it already had iCloud support, pulling down your most recent notes from the Dashboard widget or onto your iPhone. We think this is a great replacement for Apple’s Notes, and we absolutely love how simple Notefile is in its entirety.

Alfred Powerpack for Mac (Up to 3 winners): Alfred is really fantastic for Mac users who want to take it to the next level. If you’re looking for an edge in productivity, Alfred is a swiss-army knife that’ll launch documents, recall snippets from the clipboard, and call on apps with a few simple keystrokes. Search Amazon, Google, Wikipedia, and the IMDb right from your desktop. Alfred is free to download, but the Powerpack adds file system navigation, clipboard history, terminal control, an iTunes remote, and email integration to the already powerful launcher.

Fantastical for Mac (Up to 5 winners): Fantastical is the iCal companion that makes it easy to manage your schedule of meetings, client reviews, and other events through plain english. If you wanted to meet me at Brian’s Bar and Grill at four o’clock on Saturday, you could totally just type that in… and it’d just work. Fantastical is amazing.

Courier for Mac (Up to 5 winners): Productivity doesn’t always have to extend into the workplace. We’re always looking for better ways to get files online, and Courier for the Mac allows us to do just that. Simply drag and drop pictures and movies to upload them to your personal accounts such as Facebook and Flickr — web interfaces are a thing of the past.

We’re giving out a total of twenty one apps to twenty one lucky winners, and we want to thank all of the developers for hooking us up and helping us give you guys some great software. For your chance to win one of these great apps, you’ll need to check out the giveaway rules past the break!

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Mac owning freelance web developers might be able to push pixels in Photoshop and write code in BBEdit, but just how are you going about your invoices, backup, and how do you even begin to collect all the little bits of inspiration you find around the web? Clients need secure passwords to protect their websites, and responding to gobs of email can keep you from being focused on what really matters. Entertainment and keeping your daily routine in check are just as important. Freelancers also need to be on top of their game, and thus, we have the Freelance Mac App Bundle which packages $300 worth of goodies together for only $49.

Billings ($39.99)
TextExpander ($34.95)
WriteRoom ($24.99)
Radium ($9.99)
Arq ($29)
LittleSnapper ($29)
1Password ($39.99)
Alarms ($16.80)

Envato is also throwing in a wordpress theme, client manager, a professional business card, and an eBook from RockablePress to round out the bundle.

Freelancers looking for a bargain on really great apps can grab their copy today. Being a MacStories reader, however, also gives you a chance to win one of two bundles which you’ll find past the break. (more…)

We’ve talked about myPhoneDesktop before on MacStories but we thought it deserved a short ‘re-review’ to accompany today’s giveaway. Keeping it simple, the premise of myPhoneDesktop is that it provides a portal through which you can easily transfer data and information from your desktop computer to your iPhone or iPad.

Broadly speaking the app transfers four types of data including phone data (both numbers and text messages), website URLs, text and images. When you send any of that data from your computer, and there is both a desktop and web client, it will be pushed straight to your device with a notification.

But where I think the app becomes most powerful is when you have the data on your iPhone or iPad. In the corner of the app it has the “Open in” icon where it literally has a wealth of options for your data. There is everything from the obligatory search with Google, to send by email, add to contact, send SMS or launching another app with that data. Importantly, the developers aren’t resting on their laurels, since we last talked about myPhoneDesktop there have been a few updates that continue to add more app integrations including Navigon and InstaTodo.

In reality I have only just scraped the surface of what this app can do, for example it also integrates with Google Voice and Skype, so make sure to check out the myPhoneDesktop website to learn more and get your own copy. Today we’re giving away 5 ‘double passes’ of myPhone desktop – in other words the five winners will receive two promo codes, perfect to give one copy to a iPhone-toting friend or family member, or (god forbid) use it as a belated Father’s Day gift. Details of the give away are past the break.

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There’s no way we could deny the opportunity to give away a few copies of djay having gotten up close and personal with all those sexy pixels, which were recognized by the top dogs at Apple before they handed out the all-to-well-known Apple Design Award to Algoriddim. It doesn’t surprise us that such talent didn’t go unrewarded: turntables come alive with artist artwork, finger friendly equalizers can be easily adjusted, and let’s not forget the terrific automix mode for the amateur DJs in the house. Apple chose djay for its utilization of Core Audio, which helps the app pump out pristine sound at “ultra-low latencies”, and if cables aren’t your thing then AirPlay can get you set up with your preferred AV receiver. Taking advantage of the iPad 2′s A5 processor, djay for the iPad hums along as you scratch tracks, record your own sessions, and pull DRM free songs from your library with just a flick of the finger. To celebrate on their achievement, djay is on sale for $9.99 (normally $19.99) in the App Store for a limited time, so get it while it’s hot!

We’re also giving away three copies of this Apple approved app past the break – we wouldn’t want you to miss out on one of the biggest apps of this year.

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If you’ve wanted to stay on top of your Twitter status in real time, many Twitter clients won’t show you whether that last tweet caused a few unfollows or if it was fave’d by a few of your fans. For those obsessed with getting realtime feedback, Bird Bell is an excellent companion app to any Twitter client you have on the Mac, integrating with Growl and displaying real time feedback on retweets, follows, unfollows, favorites, and lists you’re added to. Bird Bell integrates with both Twitter and Favstar, and can be customized to a wide extent in revealing growl or menubar notifications per account. With the official Twitter app for the Mac (which offers live streaming), Bird Bell can give you a bird’s eye view on just how responsive your audience is to what you’ve tweeted as soon as you’ve hit the return key. Bird Bell works in the background, and only notifies you based on your interests: I personally don’t care about follows and unfollows, and choose to see favorites and retweets instead.

Twitter junkies who want to revel in their tweets can purchase Bird Bell on the Mac App Store for $1.99 — it’s a great utility that works alongside your favorite Twitter clients. We’re also giving away five copies of Bird Bell, and you can click past the break for your chance to win.

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Sparrow is the email client for the rest of us who want nothing more than an elegant app that requires no setup, looks good, and works seamlessly with Gmail out of the box. There is no concept of mapping folders to your Inbox or setting up an archive heap: Sparrow simply works with your IMAP or POP3 accounts with little needed configuration. As you may have previously read, Sparrow recently updated to include a universal inbox so you can see all of your activity in one place, and Facebook fans will be happy with the additional ability to add people as Facebook friends and pull down profile pics. Toss in Gravatar and Address Book support, and Sparrow aims to keep you connected its venture towards social integration. A lite version of Sparrow is free in the App Store, and the full version can be found for $9.99. Today, AppSumo is offering a 40% discount off Sparrow so you can pick it up for just $6, and we’re teaming up with the sales gurus to make the deal even sweeter. We’re giving away ten copies to our email churning MacStorians, and you can find all of the necessary rules past the break.

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There’s nothing worse than working on an important document only to have the power cut, and it can be heartbreaking if your most recent changes haven’t been saved before beforehand. Dropbox is an excellent tool for making sure files are backed up, but what if you imbued Snow Leopard with a powerful library capable of browsing file history (outside of Time Machine of course), storing those multiple iterations in Dropbox, and automatically invoking that command-S keystroke at timed or inactive intervals so you’ll always have the most recent version of the file on hand? ForeverSave 2 is my Textmate, OmniOutliner, Pages, and otherwise all-around document companion for constantly saving multiple versions of my documents in preparation for the worst-case scenario. ForeverSave 2 is a convenient menubar utility with a simple activation and reminder scheme for initial setup (just check out our review), and it’s currently available for $19.99 in the Mac App Store. We want you to remain vigilant with your backup regimen, which is why we’re prescribing ten copies to ail those versioning blues. Rules after the break.
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