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Welcome to MacStories Festival!

MacStories has been a little quiet lately. As I previously wrote, I’ve been working on the fist complete redesign of this blog (which is finally finished!) but I spent most of time tryin’ to organize something big for you..and here it is!

banfestival-copia

banfestival-copia

More than 110 licenses. Interviews. Exclusive Articles.

$2.600 worth.

10 Days.


MacStories Festival isn’t just a simple Huge-Giveaway Contest: it’s an event for all you Mac/ iPhone users out there.

Sure, we have more than 130 licenses of Mac and iPhone apps to give away, but this Festival will also feature exclusive articles, reviews and interviews with famous designers and developers. Many other blogs will help MacStories to spread the word about the Festival, check out this blog for updates!

UPDATE: Here are all the giveaways included in the #macfestival:

iPhone

Mac (this post)

MobileMe

UploadRobots

Typekit

How Can I Enter the Contest?

To participate, you guys have to:

1) Follow me on twitter (@storiesofmac)

2) Tweet something about the contest (what you want), including the hashtag #macfestival (i.e. “I really love the #macfestival”)

3) Leave a comment here with your twitter username

That’s it!


With just one comment, if you are lucky, you can win one of three big prizes or one of the other 90+ licenses (one for each application).

Winners will be chosen at the end of the contest using a random picker program. They will be announced in this page and from my twitter account (@storiesofmac).

The contest will end on Wednesday 7th October at 24:00 (CEST) +0200 UTC.

Are there other ways to partecipate?


Sure! Feeling creative? Create a wallpaper, a banner, a logo..anything, upload it to UploadRobots and leave a comment with the link of your creation for an extra entry. So..let’s take a look at the apps of this big giveaway!

The Applications

BONUS UPDATE #3


img2icns: 3 licenses (+ 2 on iSpazio)

The fastest and easiest way to create icons for Mac OS X. Simply convert .png icons to .icns format.

img2icns

img2icns

CoverSutra: 5 licenses

CoverSutra gives you a handy and attractive way to control iTunes without having to leave your current application. One of the best apps for Mac OS X.

covmods_icon

covmods_icon

Code Collector Pro: 2 licenses

CCP provides a great solution for organising, using and sharing your code snippets.

code-collector-pro

code-collector-pro

BONUS UPDATE #2

Forklift

Forklift is a great FTP/SFTP client and file manager for Mac OS X. It’s very fast, stable and has a great UI. You’ll find 3 licenses here on MacStories and 2 other licenses on our new partner, Little Box of Ideas.

fork

fork

BONUS UPDATE #1

xScope - 2 licenses

A great app for web-designers, xScope runs as menubar app which allows you to measure, compare and test all the elements of your designs. You’ll find another license on http://blogof.francescomugnai.com/

Review coming soon.

Little Snapper -1 license

The king of screenshot taking application, now with support for Ember, Flickr and Snow Leopard.

LittleSnapper-1024x594

LittleSnapper-1024x594

RapidWeaver -1 license

One of the most famous WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) editors around, RapidWeaver from RealMac Software (the same guys of LittleSnapper) is the perfect solution for all those who wish to set up a simple website in 5 minutes.

1Password

One the best applications for Mac OS ever created, in my opinion. 1Password is a user-friendly password manager and form filler. Packed with features, 1Password is fully compatible with Snow Leopard and has a great UI.

Read my review here.

1password_v3_screenshot

1password_v3_screenshot

Renamer

Renamer allows you to rename and number many files at once. It features a great UI and Finder integration.

Review coming soon.

screenshot_main_window

screenshot_main_window

MenuBrowser

MenuBrowser, developed by Adam Warski, is a simple and powerful app which lets you browse your Mac HD directly from your menubar.

Read my review here.

menub

menub

Dropzone

Dropzone, developed by Aptonic, is a very promising app which lets you perform many actions by simply dragging things into its dock icon. Sharing pics over Twitpic, zip and email files and many others. Revolutionary.

Review coming soon.

dropzone

dropzone

Mailplane

One of my favourite Mac apps, Mailplane brings Gmail to your Mac desktop. Mailplane isn’t a simple mail client, it’s Gmail running into your dock.

Read my review here.

2iljw9k

2iljw9k

Pixelmator

Pixelmator is a fast and elegant image processing app. Developed exclusively for the Mac platform, Pixelmator is “image editing for the rest of us”.

Review coming soon.

pixelmator_1000x

pixelmator_1000x

Master Of My Domain

MOMD is the best solution for keeping track of your domain names and server/host information, monitoring the uptime of your websites, syncing expiration dates with iCal, and getting email/SMS notifications if your website goes down.

Review coming soon!!

momd-main

momd-main

Undercover

Another revolutionary application, Undercover by Orbicule is a unique theft-recovery application designed from the ground up for Mac OS X. Basically, you install it on your Mac and if it will ever get stolen by someone, Undercover will help you in identifying the thief by remotely taking screenshots and recording his face with the built in webcam.

Moreover, Undercover uses advanced technology developed by Skyhook Wireless to locate your Mac based on Wi-Fi positioning.

It’s a very innovative product. Review coming soon.

Tweetie

In my opinion, the best Twitter desktop client ever created. Simple and cool UI, tons of features but yet accessible and easy to use.

It’s perfect.

Tweetie

Tweetie

Layers

Capture your displays as a Photoshop layered image!

layers_anatomy

layers_anatomy

Fontcase

Font management made easy and elegant. Fontcase is an award winning font manager designed by Laurent Baumann and developed by Pieter Omvlee which collects all your fonts and displays them through a stunning yet simple User Interface. A must have.

Read my review here.

fontcase

fontcase

Thurly

Not a real standalone app, Thurly is a Safari plugin which lets you shorten links and tweet directly from your browser.

Read my review here.

thurly

thurly

VirtualHostX

VirtualHostX is a manager for all your virtual hosts running into your Mac. It integrates support for the famous MAMP and a dead-simple setup process.It’s the perfect solution for web designers working on more than one project at a time.

Review coming soon.

vhx2-ss2

vhx2-ss2

Brush Pilot

Developed by Jay Hilgert of Bittbox, Brush Pilot is a rather unique application: is a powerful Photoshop brushes manager.

It lets you easily preview, organize and install .abr files in a matter of a few clicks. The interface is stunning and the application is fully compatible with Tiger, Leopard and Snow Leopard.

brush

brush

Billings

Another award winning application, Billings is the perfect tool for freelancers and people who own a small / medium business. It keeps track of everything: invoices, payments, bills.

billings

billings

Domainer

RAGE Domainer lets you keep track of the domains you own, and the domains you want to own letting you know when they expire and which ones provide the best bang for your buck.

Review coming soon.

domainer

domainer

Houdah Spot

HoudahSpot is Houdah Software’s bestselling file search tool for the Mac. Unleash the full power of Spotlight to find, manage and clean up your files. A very powerful and customizable application, expect a review soon during the Festival.

houdah

houdah

Little Snitch

The most famous firewall application for Mac. Review coming soon.

littlesnitch

littlesnitch

LaunchBar

A great application launcher which is fully customizable. Review coming soon.

Scrivener

Scrivener is a word processor and project management tool created specifically for writers of long texts such as novels and research papers.

A great application, which I’ll review very, very soon.

FullScreenEvolvedBig

FullScreenEvolvedBig

Notebook

A great app for creative minds who need to organize their stuff.

The Prizes


1st: 1Password, Renamer, MenuBrowser, Pixelmator, Tweetie, Undercover, Layers, Fontcase, Dropzone, Mailplane, Thurly, VirtualHostx, Brush Pilot, MOMD, Houdah Spot, Scrivener (more than $430 worth)

2nd: 1Password, Pixelmator, Tweetie, Renamer, Mailplane, Dropzone, Billings, MOMD, Houdah Spot, Thurly, Scrivener (more than $300 worth)

3rd: Mailplane, Dropzone, Fontcase, Layers, Scrivener, Renamer (more than $170 worth)

Other licenses (one for each app)

3 img2icns

5 Coversutra

2 Code Collector Pro

2 xScope

1 LittleSnapper

1 RapidWeaver

3 Forklift

2 Brush Pilot

1 Billings

8 Master Of My Domain

2 Houdah Spot

1 Little Snitch

1 LaunchBar

4 Scrivener

1 Notebook

4 VirtualHostX

3 Thurly

5 Renamer

2 MenuBrowser

1 Pixelmator

7 Domainer

2 Undercover

1 Fontcase

1 Layers

Collaborations and other Contests

And it’s not over yet! MacStories has teamed up with other blogs such as Francesco Mugnai, iSpazio and Little Box of Ideas to launch a real “Festival Network”: you can head over these blogs to enter other contests related to MacStories Festival!

For example, go to Francesco Mugnai’s blog to enter the first affiliate contest to MacStories Festival! Finally, expect another contest here on MacStories…everyone loves iPhone, right? :) There’s only one thing left to say…

Good Luck!

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