I have seen a lot of programs turning from freeware to commercial ones, but only a few times I saw this happening the other way around, and since we're not talking about just "another program", my joy is even greater, because I have to tell you that one of the highly acclaimed RSS readers for Mac turned from commercial to freeware, its name being NetNewsWire!


When it appeared in July, 2002, NetNewsWire was one of the first desktop RSS readers on any platform, and since then, it was released as a shareware program with a 30 days demo period, and a free to use "Lite" edition. Version 3.0, released in June, 2007, was still distributed this way, but version 3.1, announced yesterday, is available free of any charge, and comes with free synchronization capabilities with various news services.

Last version of this program updates the UI with new toolbar icons, improves performance and memory consumption and, most important of all, comes with a new HTML Archive feature, which allows you to save news items as HTML files on disk.

Using a three pane interface similar to Apple's Mail client, NetNewsWire features an improved combined view, synchronized clippings, automatic updates, smart news lists and more. To download it, simply click here.

As I was saying yesterday, more and more producers update their products these days to ensure full Leopard compatibility and take full advantage of the features offered by it. Today, Adobe released Photoshop Elements 6 for Mac, a major update to their notorious photo editing application for beginners and intermediate users.


While other producers call "major updates" new versions that only come with some fixes and no new features, Adobe takes things seriously, since they added a pack of interesting new features to Photoshop Elements 6, such as the new Group Merge Tool, which allows you to select best facial expressions and body language from a couple of shots and combine them into a master image.

Additional features of this new Photoshop Elements release provide 3 editing modes, according to the user's skills - for example, the new Guided Edit mode shows beginners various image improvement steps, helping them to master program's features faster.

According to John Loiacono, senior vice president of Creative Solutions at Adobe, "In this release, we've focused on going beyond the basics to make everyday and advanced tasks even easier to achieve. Photoshop Elements 6 for Macintosh allows people to organize and find photos quickly, unleash powerful editing tricks without any heavy lifting, and creatively share photos that give them all the bragging rights."

The product can be preordered on its Adobe.com official page, and will be shown at the MacWorld Expo in a few days, of course. The software will start being shipped early in the second quarter of the year for $90, and shipping is free for orders placed before the 24th of March.

To my amazement, it passed a lot of time already since the iPhone was released, and no news about malware threats affecting it emerged, but the sad truth is that it finally happened: reports about first Trojan for the iPhone were heard here and there, and security research companies started to confirm their validity only a bit later...


Are you scared? No? Good, because you don't even have to be scared. While F-Secure confirmed that this Trojan is a harmful one, as long as you keep it on your gadget, when uninstalled, it removes various files from the /bin folder and can render unusable applications like Sendfile or Erica's Utilities.

How can this be avoided? Very simple! First of all, if you didn't change anything on your iPhone, you should sleep well, because the Trojan only targets iPhones modded by their owners to install third-party applications.

While I am also one of those that like to mod what can be modded most of the time, I can't say I disagree with F-Secure's position regarding this evil piece of code - "Hopefully this serves as a warning for those who have opened their iPhones using a security hole in the system and then installing unverified software without a second thought to what they are doing.".

So far, so good, but one lesson should be learned from all this. "If it works, don't update it. If you want features that your model doesn't have, buy one that has them, but don't mod it." Especially since it seems an 11 year old that was playing with XML files created this so-called Trojan, I think this is more of a storm in a glass of water rather than a real threat, but it should be remembered as the first Trojan(more or less...) for the iPhone...

After Leopard was released, a lot of Mac applications needed updates to ensure full compatibility, and various software producers still keep updating their products to achieve this goal. Cheetah3D just got its latest update that improves compatibility with the latest OS from Apple, so I thought it would be nice to tell you about this, so here we go...


If this name sounds new to you, then I should tell you that Cheetah3D is a computer graphics program that allows you to create, animate and render 3D models, written in Cocoa for the Mac OS X only. While it is aimed at beginners and amateurs, the results it can achieve don't look bad at all, as you can see in the picture above, but don't expect to find out that next Shrek movie is going to be rendered using this program...

The latest update to Cheetah3D brings the current version number up to 4.4, and this is a free update for all registered users of any 4.x release. Minimum system requirements are Mac OS X 10.4.x, a G3/G4/G5/Intel processor, 512 MB of system memory and at least 16 MB of video memory.

A single user version costs $129, but you can try it before you buy it as well. All you have to do is grab your free trial version from here and start to unleash some 3D magic on your Mac with Cheetah3D!

The iPhone is probably the gadget that got the most press coverage in 2007, and it continues to remain an object for desire for a lot of people, especially since it wasn't even officially released in some parts of the world. Unlike the iPod, the iPhone doesn't have so many protective cases available to purchase, so I was really happy to discover GizMac's Titan Clear, despite the fact I don't have an iPhone(maybe just "not yet")...


The Titan Clear for iPhone is a case and holster for your beloved phone from Apple, and its tough, crystal clear polycarbonate shell allows you to keep your eyes on the gadget, while protecting it from shocks and scratches, at the same time.

As one would expect, this shell offers open access areas for controls, camera and headphones (and dust or liquids too, I must add), while the retractable horizontal and vertical kickstands built into the case allow you to easily view movies, videos, calls and more, as you can see in the picture at the beginning of this article.

The product is already shipping for a price of $34.99, and if you think your iPhone would look good in a Titan Clear case (despite my evil remark about the open access areas, I think this case is great), simply go to this page and order yours!