There have been an increasing number of requests from Color Picker Pro users over the past few months to implement a method for capturing and copying colors in one keystroke. Ironically this is exactly how Color Picker Pro behaved in early beta testing, but automatically copying a captured color to the clipboard met with disapproval from most beta testers at the time and disappeared in favor of separate capture and copy commands. As there are clearly strong opinions on both sides of the issue and merits to both implementations, the choice is now yours! In the “General” preferences for Color Picker Pro you can now choose to have captured color values automatically copied to the clipboard.

If you’d like to give this change a try before it’s officially released, please download a beta copy of:

Color Picker Pro 3.2

and give it a whirl. As always your bug reports, feedback and opinions are most appreciated!

The excellent individual behind Houdah Software, Pierre Bernard, has taken it upon himself to create the awesome Easter mEgg Hunt! In the same spirit as MacSanta, Houdah Software’s Easter mEgg Hunt is a fun way to score some great Mac software at a 20% discount. Color Picker Pro is one of the applications featured in the hunt, so if you’re interested in saving a few bucks on this excellent CSS and HTML color capture utility, now is an excellent time to do so!

The Easter mEgg Hunt runs through the end of March. Happy hunting!

After a prolonged development hiatus, I am very happy to announce that Calindock has finally been converted from a Dockling into a Universal Binary. If you’re running Tiger or Leopard and have ever wanted a monthly or daily calendar in your Dock, Calindock may become an indispensable utility! Calindock is fully localized for English, Spanish, French, German and Japanese, but the calendar itself should support any language supported in Mac OS X.

Feedback from users regarding Calindock’s functionality is most welcome. Also, as Calindock is currently being released as freeware, I am seeking help with application localization. If you enjoy Calindock and your native tongue is something other than English, please consider donating your translation skills. Last but not least, if you happen to be a skilled Mac icon designer who likes working on the cheap, I’ve always thought Calindock would benefit from design skill beyond my own.

Happy date gazing!

Normally I’d really, really like Time Capsule. I think it’s possibly the easiest and most unobtrusive backup solution I’ve seen to date. The price is fairly reasonable too considering it’s also a 802.11n Wi-Fi base station. So what’s my beef? When I purchased my AirPort Extreme base station, I did so with the notion that I’d be able to use it in tandem with an external USB drive to back up all of my Macs using Time Machine. From the original Mac OS X Leopard website:

“With a hard disk connected to your AirPort Extreme Base Station, all the Macs in your house can use Time Machine to back up wirelessly. Simply select your AirPort Disk as the backup disk for each computer and the whole family can enjoy the benefits of Time Machine.”

Of course the very same page contained the now prophetic clause:

“All features referenced in the Mac OS X Leopard website are subject to change.”

Indeed they were! The release version of Leopard shipped missing support for Wi-Fi Time Machine backups. There’s nothing inherently wrong with that. Some features aren’t mature or reliable enough to be released. I write software. I get it. I assumed however that this particular bit of functionality would be restored in a 10.5.x update somewhere along the way. Little had I suspected that it would be restored today with a $300 or $500 price tag attached!

To be fair, it’s entirely possible that Apple is in fact planning on releasing a software update that will enable Time Machine backups via the old AirPort Extreme and an external USB drive. I really hope that they do. There are no shortage of people who invested in both an AirPort Extreme and an external USB drive for the sole purpose of backing up their machines via Wi-Fi and Time Machine right before Leopard was released.