• BundlesForMac has announced the New Years 2012 Bundle; 8 great apps being sold for more than 90% off through January 14, 2012. The included apps are a good selection of useful tools: DVD Maker, SWF Converter, Pulp Motion, Concealer, Yummy FTP, Fantashow, PDF Converter for Mac, and iCash. These tools are great utilities to extend any Mac users library of quality software.
• As has been the tradition for the past five years, Mariner Software has opened the doors to its online store and has discounted its non-upgrade, Mac and Windows desktop apps by 50%. This includes the popular creative writing products of: StoryMill, Contour, Montage, Desktop Poet and Narrator. Also included are the home and office products of: MacGourmet Deluxe, Paperless, Mariner Write and Mariner Calc, as well as the popular bundles of: the Journal Pak (MacJournal and WinJournal), the MarinerPak (Mariner Calc and Mariner Write), and the Mariner Writers Suite, which includes 7 of their most popular writing apps. As in past years, the end-of-year event will end at 11:59pm Central on Saturday, January 1,2012. Use code EY2011 when checking out.
• Tropical Software has announced its TopXNotes Mac note and password protection application is available for 50% off its regular retail price through midnight EDT, Sunday, January 1, 2012. TopXNotes is a very popular full-featured personal note manager and and password protection application. Create, view, organize, secure, and instantly access your Mac notes with TopXNotes. For this exclusive promotion TopXNotes Mac is also available in CD form, 2 for the price of 1.
• Dear Panda LLC is celebrating the holidays with a sale on CourseNotes, their top selling iPad and Mac apps which helps students take notes and stay organized. The must-have apps for students will be on sale for a low price for both iPad and for Mac through January 1st. Dear Panda also announced that they will provide promo codes as a gift to educators to try the app for free, while supplies last. CourseNotes lets you take notes during your classes.
• Global Delight is running some great discounts for their products: Boom is 50% off ($4.99) and Voila is 33% off ($19.99) until January 2, 2012.
• Bias is wishing you happy holidays by offering 20% off any new product. Buy a new retail copy of any Bias product and get 20% off from now until the end of the year.
• Eltima Software has launched their Christmas bundle, which includes their 3 best-selling apps for Mac. Additional Christmas discounts for other Eltima apps are also available. SyncMate Expert is a powerful sync tool, Folx is an Internet download manager and torrent client for Mac, and Elmedia Player PRO is a media player for Mac. The Christmas Bundle can be purchased at Eltima website and costs only $49.95 instead of $79.85 (the original price for these 3 apps if purchased separately). The offer is valid through January 5, 2012 only. But that’s not all gifts Eltima brings to you this Christmas. Additionally, 25% Christmas discounts are offered on various other Mac apps.
• Paragon Software Group has announced holiday discounts on some of its most popular mobile reference and productivity software applications for iOS and desktop Mac. From December 16 through January 10, 2012, all world-famous dictionary brands, including Britannica, Collins, Duden, Merriam-Webster, Oxford, PONS, Wahrig and Paragon’s own Slovoed, along with best-selling utility apps Handy Safe Desktop and PenReader, will be available at up to 50% off the regular retail prices.
• As the world counts down to Christmas and New Year, MacXDVD Software has announced a brand new promotion that sure to spark the Xmas and New Year holiday spirit. To celebrate the upcoming holiday season, they prepared two product giveaways: MacX DVD to MKV Ripper and MacX Video Converter Pro from Dec 15, 2011 to Jan 5, 2012. Consumers looking for Christmas freebie or the chance to win some fantastic prizes should give the MacXDVD Holiday special offer a go.
• Yazsoft has announced a special mega bundle package for the holidays. During the month of December, get all their applications at one low price. This includes multiple licenses of Playback, ShareTool, and Speed Download 5. It also includes Unblunder and Attachments Menu. It’s the perfect time to add all these popular utilities to your Mac or even better, gift them to someone close.

Games

• To celebrate the New Year, Realore Studios has announced a 30 to 70% price drop on all of its games on Apple App and Mac Stores. Such renowned titles as Roads of Rome, Island Tribe, Farm Mania and Jane’s Hotel go on sale. The offer will last through January 2. Don’t miss your chance to get the game you have wanted all year because there won’t be a better time to do it.
• The Steam Holiday Sale is on now through Sunday, January 1, 2012. In addition to huge savings throughout the store, the 2011 sale features two special promotions that allow you to win like never before. The Great Gift Pile challenges gamers to complete up to six objectives each day. Completion of each objective grants the chance to win a free game or discount coupons for select games available on Steam. If you don’t win, no worries, you’ll be given a piece of coal. But hold onto that coal. Why? Coal is the ticket to enter the Epic Holiday Giveaway.

Organized

• Elfster, a free online Secret Santa organizer and social networking platform, today announced an extension of their Elfster.com service into the social networking space as well as onto iPhone and Android apps. Make creating a Secret Santa your easiest project this year either on the go or simply by sharing the Facebook app with your friends, whose lists you can use to give them they gifts they really want.
• FileMaker has announced The Bento 4 Holiday Kit, a free, fun way to get organized for the holiday season—on a Mac or on the go using an iPhone or iPad. The Bento 4 Holiday Kit organizes your holiday cards and mailing labels, helps you plan parties, track gift lists, send thank you notes and accomplish other holiday tasks with style and ease.
• This year, you can take care of all your Christmas cards quickly and easily. Whether you’re sending Christmas dinner invitations, Christmas cards to family and friends or your annual family newsletter – the new Season’s Greetings Vol. 4 has 25 fresh ideas for all your messages. Plus: Take advantage of the new timeline to give you an overview of all the holidays and choose the perfect template for every occasion.
• It’s time to wish your friends and family a Merry Christmas. Why not skip the postcards this year and send everyone a personalized christmas card by email instead? Don’t worry, it’s really easy. Mail Designer helps you give your Christmas cards that personal touch. Mail Designer is available for only $69.95 in the equinux online store.

Festive

• Atomic Flavor has announced that Christmas Shooter, their new addictive game based on physics and social component, is now available for Mac OS X, iOS devices and Android. The goal of the game is to get the maximum distance within a limited time. Shoot gifts to people for more time and achieve a distance record to share on your favorite social networks such as Twitter and Facebook, then compare your rankings in the global GameCenter leader board.

Learn about even more Macintosh holiday software by reading our Festive Apple series.

However, if you’re a snow fan, wherever you live you can still enjoy some snow on your computer desktop for Christmas, and the great thing about virtual snow is than you don’t have to shovel or plow it!

There are more desktop snow applications for the Mac than you might imagine.

OS X

Let It Snow – $0.99

Bring a Winter Wonderland to your desktop with Let It Snow’s realistic snow fall and get into that festive holiday feeling as snow covers your dock and settles on windows whilst you work.

Features:

• Realistic snow fall – using a physics engine
• Snow drifts – that build up at the bottom of the screen
• Snow covered windows – snow settles on the currently active window
• Random flurries of snow – so you’d better wrap up warm
• Melting snow – snow disappears after a period of time

Product [Let It Snow]

Snow Dance 3D Screensaver 1.2 – $12.95 Shareware

Smoothly falling flakes create sensation of calmness and serenity.

Snow Dance 3D Screensaver shows you the bewitching attraction and purity of snow-white winter. Imagine that you are on mountain top and take pleasure in a magnificent landscape of mountain nature. Huge flakes of snow softly lay down on the earth, forming a snow-white airy cover. The well-shaped evergreen, splendid firs, muffed with snow, harmoniously brighten a panorama and decorate solitary, centuries-old mountains. Harmony and pacification reign everywhere.

More than just a screensaver:

• Each screensaver contains a clock of two kinds (analog and digital)
• Each screensaver contains a calendar
• Screensavers work under Windows and Mac OS X

Product [Snow Dance 3D Screensaver]

Snow in the Dashboard – Free

A snow animation for your dashboard.

Product [
Snow in the Dashboard]

Snow 1.2 – $10 shareware

Back when I was running the Classic Mac OS, my favorite snow application was Rick Jansen’s Snow for Macintosh, which let it snow on your desktop and on your windows, adds a Christmas Tree, and sends Santa and his sleigh flying around your screen for extra festive season cheer. However, one of the cool things about Classic Snow is that since the whole process of letting it snow on your windows is somewhat CPU intensive; if you found Snow slowing down your machine you could use the preferences to choose fewer or smaller snowflakes, no Santa, no tree, or no snow at all. You can set the number of flakes, how fast they fall, Santa’s speed limit etc. It all worked very well.

Rick has happily released an OS X native version of Snow for the Macintosh. It still snows on your desktop and Santa and his reindeer still fly around your screen while snow piles up on top of your windows. However, the tree is gone, having been replaced by an ambling Polar Bear and resizable snowdrop plants. Rudolph the Reindeer’s nose also glows red once you register the application.

New in this version:

• Improved performance
• Universal Binary (PPC and Intel)

Product [Snow]

Snowfall: The Ice Storm – Free

Quartz composer screensaver for Mac OS 10.4 Tiger features snowflake images by Wilson Bentley – The Snowflake Man. Once it’s installed in the Library/Screensavers, you can customize it to suit your tastes by modifying the options in System Preferences.

“Under the microscope, I found that snowflakes were miracles of beauty; and it seemed a shame that this beauty should not be seen and appreciated by others. Every crystal was a masterpiece of design and no one design was ever repeated., When a snowflake melted, that design was forever lost. Just that much beauty was gone, without leaving any record behind.”

– Wilson “Snowflake” Bentley 1925

Product [Snowfall: The Ice Storm]

LotsaSnow 1.5 – Free

This screensaver draws snowflakes falling down your screen. Simple enough, but the oh-so-clever part is that it uses a semi-physical model for growing each snowflake, meaning every snowflake is actually unique, and also that it uses a quite a bit of processing power. But that’s the price you pay for indivduality.

Product [
LotsaSnow]

Mac OS Classic

Snow – Free

Dave Warker’s’ Snow is a small, free application for Macs running the Classic Mac OS, categorized as a “Sanity Saver” by its author, that drifts snowflakes down your monitor screen accompanied by the gentle sound of sleigh bells or Christmas music.

You can select the desired snowstorm intensity using the Flakes sub-menu, from gentle flurries to blizzard conditions. Turning on causes some of the flakes to be blown about. Snow supports multiple sets of flakes.

You can also adjust the volume of the jingling sleigh bells, or turn them off completely. The Tunes menu requires QuickTime 2.0 or later By default, Snow plays available tunes in random order, but you can uncheck the Random Order menu item to hear them sequentially. You can also add more tunes by placing MIDI files in the Snow Tunes folder. Several download site links are included in the program’s online documentation.

The package includes sample QuickTime music files of jazzed up holiday favorites. With this release you can now convert MIDI files to QuickTime music files via drag-and-drop.

This version has only been tested under System 8.1 and later versions of the MacOS, but the basic flakes and sleigh bells should work on any Classic Mac except those that use the original 68000 processor (Mac Plus, SE, Portable and the original 128k/512k Macs.) 68000 based Macs. Users of those machines should continue to use version 2.2. Note that the new music files will work fine with this version. The automatic wake-up feature uses system features that may not be present on recent system releases. It doesn’t crash but it is possible that it may wake up when it shouldn’t.

Automatic wake up requires System 7 or later. Music requires at least QuickTime 2.0 but for best results you should be using Apple’s latest QuickTime package. You can download it from the QuickTime site at http://www.quicktime.apple.com.

Snow is free for personal use.

Product [Snow]

Snow’ed 1.0 – $1.00 shareware

Snow’ed is another older desktop application for the Classic Mac OS that puts snow on your desktop, this time in a window frame. From the menu bar you can choose options like different color window frames and how much snow to fall.

The snow in the application is anti-aliased, and each flake has its own speed and brightness.

You have your choice of four window styles : White, Brown, Moonlit, and Walter Mitty.

System requirements:

• “Snow’ed” requires thousands of colors minimum with millions suggested.
• Best at resolution of 800 x 600 or higher, will work at a lower resolution of 640 x 480 though.

Product [Snow'ed]

The secret of growing good Christmas trees is to thin the stands when the trees are seedlings, but unless you’re in the Christmas tree business, it’s hard to find the time.

I’m a Christmas tree purist. I prefer a dark green balsam fir (Abies balsamea) with long needles and a fairly bushy shape, but one that grew naturally with no artificial shape-shearing—let alone one made in China from plastic and aluminum.

The fragrant Balsam Fir is the perfect Christmas tree, with its soft dark green needles, symmetrical shape and distinctive aroma. As one Nova Scotia grower puts it, the Balsam Fir is Christmas. Of course, Douglas Fir or other popular Christmas tree species fanciers might dispute that!

The first record of a decorated Christmas was in Riga, Latvia in 1510, and the first printed reference to Christmas trees appeared in Germany in 1531.

And when Britain’s Queen Victoria married Germany’s Prince Albert in 1840, he brought the tradition to London. Pictures of the British Royal Family and their Christmas tree appeared in newspapers, and thousands of people in Canada, the United States, and England soon began decorating their own trees.

However, it’s likely that Germans who emigrated to the U.S. and Canada in the 1700s set up their own trees long before the British royals popularized the practice.

The first Christmas tree retail lot in the United States was reportedly started in 1851 in New York by Mark Carr. In 1856, Franklin Pierce, the 14th President of the United States, was the first President to place a Christmas tree in the White House. President Calvin Coolidge started the National Christmas Tree Lighting Ceremony on the White House lawn in 1923.

Today, the top selling Christmas trees are Balsam fir, Douglas fir; Fraser fir, Noble fir, Scotch pine and White pine, and about a third of Christmas trees displayed in United States will be real trees; the rest artificial trees.

How to Pick the Perfect Real Christmas Tree

Not everyone is fortunate enough to live on a large woodlot in ideal Christmas tree growing country, but you can still find a nice real, grown-in-the-ground tree. For instance, the Wisconsin Christmas Tree Producers Association says that the Friday after Thanksgiving isn’t just about holiday sales and turkey leftovers. It also marks the beginning of Christmas tree season for many choose-and-cut farms and retail lots, and they suggest that before heading out to purchase a Christmas tree, a little preparation goes a long way.

Make a Plan

Before leaving home, know what size and type of tree will best fit your space.

Measure the ceiling height in the room where the tree will be displayed. Leave extra space for a tree stand and tree topper.

Measure the width of the area of the room where the tree will be displayed. Most trees on tree farms are sheared to an 80 percent taper. For example, a tree that’s 10 feet tall will be 8 feet wide at the bottom. A tree that will fit in the room vertically might be too big horizontally.

Consider your decorations. Some trees have more open foliage, stiffer branches or longer needles.

Know Your Tree

If you don’t know what species of tree you prefer, here are a few comparative characteristics.

• Balsam fir – a relatively dense tree with a slender, spire-like tip. It has a dark-green appearance, long-lasting needles and retains its pleasing fragrance.
• Fraser fir – similar to the Balsam fir with a pyramid shape and strong branches that are turned slightly upwards. Its form, needle retention, dark blue-green color and pleasant scent have made it a popular choice.
• Scotch pine – known for its long needles and stiff branches, which are well suited for decorating. It has good needle retention and holds up well throughout the holiday season.
• Colorado blue spruce – an increasingly popular species due to its symmetrical form and unique blue foliage. It has an attractive natural shape.
• White spruce – has a conical form that extends to the ground. White spruce has a lovely foliage color, short stiff needles and good natural shape.
• Eastern white pine – one of the largest pines in the United States. White pine has very little aroma, and is reported to result in fewer allergic reactions than more aromatic species.
• White fir – also known as concolor fir. It has good foliage color, a pleasing natural shape and aroma, and good needle retention.
• Douglas-fir – a popular species, unrelated to true firs, with dark green or blue green needles that are soft to the touch and radiate out in all directions from the branch.
• Canaan fir – a relative newcomer to the Christmas tree market with similarities to Fraser and Balsam firs.

Choosing A Christmas Tree Lot

Make sure the lot is well-lit and trees are stored in a shaded area.

Run a branch through your enclosed hand – the needles should not come off easily.

Bend the outer branches; they should be pliable. However, if the outside temperature is below freezing, the branches might break because they are frozen.

Look for other indicators of dryness or deterioration: excessive needle loss, discolored foliage, musty odor, needle pliability, and wrinkled bark. When in doubt about the freshness of a tree, select another one.

Choosing a Choose-and-Cut Farm

If you want to get more hands-on in touch with the Christmas tree acquisition experience, there’s the choose-and-cut farm alternative.

Go to the farm prepared for a day in the country. Wear comfortable shoes and old clothes. Anyone planning to cut or load the tree should bring gloves. And don’t forget the camera! Leave pets at home.

Saws are usually provided by the farm operator, but check ahead of time.

Ask about pricing before heading out into the field. Some farms measure and price their trees individually; others sell them by the foot.

Head out to the field and select the tree that fits your predetermined needs. Check the trunk to be sure that it is sufficiently straight. Keep in mind that pines will usually have at least some crook in their trunks. Also check that the tree trunk butt has a sufficiently long handle to accommodate your stand.

For more tree tips, visit christmastrees-wi.org.

Macintosh

While I’m not a fan of full-size artificial Christmas trees, I do like the virtual ones you can have on your Mac Desktop. Here are some Christmas trees for the Mac.

X-MasTree 1.4 – A Christmas Tree for your Mac

For those who love the holidays and want to decorate everything starting with their tree to their garden, there is now an application that allows them to decorate their desktop as well. Part of the fun of Christmas season is decorating their Mac.

There are many applications out there that help users do this, but most of them don’t focus on the most important thing: the tree. The Christmas Tree for Your Mac is a desktop freeware application developed by John Schilling.

X-Mas Tree is a simple and free application with a few great settings so that users can customize their desktops trees to their heart’s content. The little app has ornaments, tinsel, popcorn strands, flashing lights, bobbles and even a star. And in case users forget how many days are left until Christmas, the app counts down the days, so anybody can feel like a kid again anxiously awaiting the 25th.

There are many options, including which color lights to display, lighting modes (static, blinking or fading), a few ornaments, and a badge displaying days left until Christmas. Warning: setting the lighting mode to “fade” will beat the living snot out of your CPU.

X-MasTree is 159% Freeware. X-MasTree may be freely distributed, as long as no fees are collected for it.

Product [X-MasTree]

Christi’s Tree 2.1 Desktop Christmas Tree W/Christmas Countdown In Dock

Christi’s Tree is simply a Christmas Tree for your Mac. It sits on your desktop or in your dock to give your Mac that extra little bit of holiday cheer.

The tree has lots of great features. You can add decorations like cranberry garland, red Christmas balls, and even flashing lights. It works in your dock, or as a floating window. And best of all, it’s free.

This is Christi’s Tree with the cranberry garland and the red Christmas balls. If you can see that the balls are actually tiny glassy aqua-style balls.

This is Christi’s Tree configured with no decorations excep the star on top. It’s nice and simple. Just a tree.

This is Christi’s tree configured with everything. It’s even got the flashing lights—although they look better when they’re actually going. This screenshot makes them look a bit more psychedelic than maybe they really are.

Christi’s Tree is freeware.

Product [Christi's Tree for Mac]

TreetopLights 2.4 Desktop Christmas Tree And Animated Lights

TreetopLights is an AppleScript Studio application that places a Christmas tree on the desktop and holiday lights on the menubar or screen edges. The desktop tree can be decorated with blinking or fading lights, ornaments, a treetop star, and perhaps some snow. The ambient lighting can be controlled for the appearance of a dimly or brightly lit room, and the transparency and size of the tree can be set to keep it out of the way, or set the perfect holiday mood. The optional but festive menubar lights can blink or glow to decorate the menubar, or even go around the screen. A countdown timer displaying days until Christmas, and the twelve days of Christmas are also included for on-tree display. There’s also an option to send a Christmas greeting through Apple’s Mail application.

TreetopLights is free, and will only run under Mac OS X 10.3 or later.

Product [TreetopLights 2.4]

Christmas Tree Creator 2004 Makes Animated Christmas Trees

Christmas Tree Creator ’04 is the latest version of the previous Christmas Tree Creator software.

Use Tree Creator to create fun digital Christmas trees by adding drag-and-drop ornaments and lights. Apply the editing tools to get everything just the way you want it, then share your creations by printing greeting cards, posters, emailing friends, or viewing your trees as animated screen savers.

Despite the name, this is the current version. Christmas Tree Creator ’04 is freeware.

Product [Christmas Tree Creator 2004]

The Perfect Tree 2.0 – Spruce Up The Perfect Christmas Tree

Spruce up your Christmas season with The Perfect Tree, a cheerful holiday offering from Anawiki Games. Based on the classic Christmas tale of the same name, the game tells the story of a lonely little pine tree and the player’s efforts to help it become the perfect Christmas tree.

The Perfect Tree features classic Match-3 mechanics, enhanced by numerous exciting power-ups, seasonal level design and gorgeous special effects. Earn stars by chaining together combos and by clearing levels as quickly as possible, then trade them in for lights, ornaments, garlands and presents to turn the poor, pitiful pine into a beautiful Christmas tree of your own design.

With its bright, cheerful graphics and positive message, The Perfect Tree is a holiday treat for the whole family. Whether you’re looking for a way to unwind after a tiring day of Christmas shopping, or for something to distract your little ones until the 25th.

Features:

• Create your very own perfect tree
• Magnificent match-3 mechanics
• Exciting power-ups and gorgeous special effects
• Beautiful white Christmas atmosphere
• 110 levels, packed with Christmas cheer
• Over 100 items to decorate your tree
• Cheery, seasonal soundtrack

The full, unlimited version is available at the regular price of $10.21 CAD. The promo price of $2.99 – use coupon NEW299.

Product [The Perfect Tree 2.0 ]

Christmas Tree Bounce 1.0 Bouncing Christmas Tree Screen Saver

Christmas Tree Bounce is a new Mac OS X screen saver that simply takes an image of a basic Christmas Tree and uses gravity to bounce it on the screen (various times).

The screensaver is small (116 KB) and uses very little system resources.

In theory, you can edit the package of the Screen Saver and replace the tree.png file with your own file (keep the name the same though, and be aware of the dimensions to make sure it doesn’t look odd). I’ve tried this and it does work.

This saver should work with 10.4 onwards, but only really guarantees 10.4.9 onwards.

Christmas Tree Bounce is free and supports PPC and Intel Macs.

Products [Christmas Tree Bounce]

Happy Tree Icons 1.0

Happy Tree Icons is a set of four colorful tree icons to green your desktop.

Happy Tree Icons is free, and requires a PPC or Intel Mac running Mac OS X 10.0 or later.

Product [Happy Tree Icons]

According to the Blogging Thomas Website, the first advent calendars appeared in 19th-Century Germany when various methods of counting the days between the start of Advent and Christmas Day were used. Advent calendars were introduced to the USA with the assistance of U.S. president Dwight ‘Ike’ Eisenhower, whose grandchildren took a shine to the idea. The calendar was soon adopted in other countries too, and in the U.K., chocolates began to appear behind the little doors as soon as rationing would allow. By the end of the 1950s, chocolate advent calendars had appeared, and by the following decade they had become widespread. They still exist today, with hundreds of different varieties appearing across the globe.

Advent Calendars for iOS

Christmas!! (Free)

Gourmet Pixel Ltd. have made this one the biggest and best Christmas apps for iOS devices. Packed full of features, the app features a helpful countdown, letting you know exactly how many more days you have to get all those presents for loved ones.

The app is available all year long, yet before the 1st December each year all of the extra features, jokes, songs, toys etc are locked. Once the 1st December arrives, the fun really starts.

You will then be able to start opening the windows within the Advent calendar, with each window unlocking a new feature within the app. This will happen every day right through December until Christmas arrives. The developers have added some great hidden treats this year, wallpapers, jokes, festive songs, games, facts and many many more. – the only one you ever need. Xmas Fun 2.1 includes:

• Christmas Day Countdown clock
• Advent Calendar With Surprises/li>
• Make a Christmas Gift List/li>
• Virtual Toys & Gifts/li>
• Create fun festive photos/li>
• Festive Jokes/li>
• Christmas songs and jokes/li>
• Find Christmas Facts/li>
• Play Festive Games/li>
• A gift list, so you can keep track of all your present ideas. You can store the name of the person, and the gift idea, then take it off the list when you’ve bought it./li>

This app works every Christmas, year after year.

Product [Christmas!!]

Christmas Clock: Deluxe Edition (Free)

Scottish-based software developers Vasoware offer Christmas Clock: Deluxe Edition for iOS. It’s not exactly an Advent calendar, but something analogicsally similar, featuring a suite of tools to use in the run up to the holidays. Count down the days and hours to Christmas, listen to classic Christmas songs, and track Santa’s every move, all while enjoying fluid animations and dynamic weather effects. In keeping with the Christmas spirit, all users get the Christmas Deluxe version for free. This app is a big hit with young children and anyone who eagerly anticipates the holidays, and has already been downloaded thousands of times.

“We wanted Christmas Clock: Deluxe Edition to be a high-quality, cheery application that our customers can enjoy for free,” said Christopher Saunders of the Vasoware Development Team. “People everywhere love the magic and innocence of Christmas, and we’re looking forward to our customers enjoying this mobile application with their whole family this holiday.”

Christmas Clock: Deluxe Edition is free and available worldwide exclusively through the App Store in the Entertainment category.

Product [Christmas Clock: Deluxe Edition 1.0.1: ]

Children’s Christmas (Free)

BCNmultimedia, the creator of Children’s Bible app, the world’s most downloaded children’s e-book, has announced the release of Children’s Christmas 1.0, an Advent Calendar free app for iPhone, iPod touch and iPad. If you like Advent calendars, this is the app for you: an Advent calendar for children of all ages.

Starting on the 1st of December, kids will be able to open the corresponding window every day until Christmas day. In every window you will find an illustration about a moment in the gospels on the Annunciation and the Birth of Jesus, together with a text and a quotation from the Bible.

Main features of Children’s Christmas:

• A different illustration every day, from December 1st to Christmas day
• A complete teaching resource for Advent and Christmas in 25 illustrations
• For every window, a matching illustration and the corresponding biblical text
• Parents, catechists and teachers can open the windows before the date in order to prepare their comments
• Wish your friends and relatives a Merry Christmas sharing these illustrations via e-mail, Twitter or Facebook
• When all of the windows in the calendar are open, you will see a beautiful Christmas tree with images of the Birth of Jesus (iPad version)
• Those who get ready for Christmas with the movies and comic books from Children’s Bible will find new drawings and texts in Children’s Christmas

Children’s Christmas 1.0 is free and available worldwide exclusively through the App Store in the Books category.

Product [Children's Christmas]

AdventAlarm ($0.99)

Wait for Christmas with the alarm clock and the calendar of Advent! Wonderful Christmas music, performed and interpreted by Trio Monte for the alarm clock every day of the week. In addition, the postcard of the day to greet whoever you want.

It’s simple:

• Set the alarm time (also works in the background)
• The alarm clock has new music every day of the week
• Every day you can also mail the postcard
• Christmas time is over? A special track for the alarm throughout the year!

Happy Advent and Merry Christmas!

Product [AdventAlarm]

Macintosh

Adventskranz Dashboard Wreath Widget 1.1 (Free)

This widget decorates your Dashboard at Christmastime. Light a candle on your virtual Advent wreath each Sunday in Advent season.

Requires Mac OS X 10.4.3 or later.

Product [Adventskranz Dashboard Wreath Widget]

Christmas Calendar 1.0 (Free)

This is a Christmas Calendar widget for Mac OS X 10.4. (Tiger). It contains 24 “Windows jokes”—one behind every door—until Christmas Eve! In other words: ’24 Reasons why you are glad you’ve got a Mac’!

If you try to open a door too early you’ll see the cat image and the number of days you still have to wait. There is a “Show Anyway” button, but I trust you not to use it.

Product [http://christmas-calendar.en.softonic.com/mac]

Web

BBC Bach Christmas Calendar (Free)

If you love the music of J.S. Bach as I do, this Christmas calendar from the BBC is sublime. It hasn’t been updated for a while, but no matter. A visit will be self-explanatory.

Product [A Bach Christmas Calendar]

Full Homely Divinity Advent Calendar (Free)

The Traditional Anglican Organization Full Homely Divinity says, “Finding ourselves a bit frustrated by Advent Calendars that are more about Christmas than Advent, we decided to try our hand at creating our own online Advent Calendar. The background for our calendar is a Jesse Tree on an ivory panel from Bavaria, c. 1200, which is now at the Louvre Museum in Paris. Paris.

“As is the case with most Advent calendars, ours begins on December 1st, rather than the First Sunday of Advent. That simply means that in some years you will have to start the calendar a day or two before Advent begins, while in other years, it will not have enough days. Click on the numbers to follow a link for each day of December leading up to Christmas. The numbers beyond the current day are not yet linked to the page of the day. You can look back at days you have missed, but you will have to come back for the days that are still ahead. The Jesse Tree provides one of the themes of the project: the ancient faith history of the people of God as the forebears of the Messiah lived it. The calendar also looks forward to the culmination of God’s plan at the end of time, linking the faith history of the past with John’s grand apocalyptic vision in the Book of Revelation.

“The Jesse Tree provides one of the themes of the project: the ancient faith history of the people of God as the forebears of the Messiah lived it. The calendar also looks forward to the culmination of God’s plan at the end of time, linking the faith history of the past with John’s grand apocalyptic vision in the Book of Revelation.”

Product [Full Homely Divinity Advent Calendar]

Also see:

• The Festive Apple 2011: iPad Advent Calendars
• The Festive Apple 2011: Christmas Quotations Advent Calendar for iPhone

If you don’t already know what Growl is, let me enlighten you. It’s a notification system. Let’s say you’re downloading a big file and also doing something else. Why stop what you’re doing to check to see if it’s done? Don’t. Just let Growl tell you when it’s done with a little message. It works with a ton of applications, so if you’re questioning whether you really need this, check out the Growl site for full details.

There are, of course, ramifications of Growl being on the App Store. The good news is that you can install it on all of your computers easily. The bad news is that it can’t try to add support for apps that don’t want it, like Mail. It’s also Lion only (10.7+), which I don’t really think is a bad thing, but some might. And finally, it’s not free anymore. But like I said before, it’s worth it.

Growl 1.3 introduces a plethora of great features like personalized notifications, a variety of style, an application tab for controlling what you get notified about, a new networking system called GNTP, and speech display, and you can even send notifications to your iOS device with Prowl.

So, go buy it already.

Buy [Growl]

Ah, the glamor of parenthood. How quickly your Mac and iDevice turn from entertainment and productivity to something like settling your nerves when your baby’s not in the same room as you. But really, why not? What’s the point in buying extra devices to make sure your child is secure and happy when you’ve already got nearly all the equipment you need as part of your digital hub?

One of the first places you’ll want to look is WiFi Baby. This wireless device connects to your Mac, iPhone and iPad via your wireless network, bypassing all the problem you usually get with analog/digital signals: interference, short range, etc. Your ability to read the video/audio feed is hampered only by the strength of your WiFi signal.

So, let’s take a look at how it all comes together. The standalone WiFi Baby camera itself comes in white or black, so there aren’t many options for matching your nursery’s decor. A flexible stand allows you adjust the position of the camera, and you can attach it to the wall via screw openings in the stand. Unfortunately, that’s really your only option for fixing it in a secure place. The CPSC says you should never have a camera or their cords within three fee of a baby’s crib anyway, so best to pick a spot in the room that can handle layout changes.

Before you do any of this, though, you’ll need to connect the camera to your computer via the provided ethernet cable. You’ll then run through the software setup to tell your computer where the device is and and to set up security (one of the benefits of WiFi, after all, is that it’s secure, so you don’t have to worry about anyone else connecting to your video stream).

This, however, is where WiFi Baby could use some help. I had trouble setting up the remote connection, and eventually had to get some phone support. The problem ended up being mine…something as embarrassingly basic as a password error, but better error messages and a cleaner user interface could’ve helped me realize that on my own. WiFi Baby has handy tutorial videos online, but the whole process still feels a bit too cryptic and PC-like.

Once everything is connected, though, the WiFi Baby camera is great. The signal is strong and clear, and the quality of the image was quite impressive at 640×480 resolution and 30 frames per second. The color is oddly off, but once you get used to that, it’s not a big deal…I’ll take it over the jerky, pixelated images like you get in the Paranormal Activities movies and whatnot.

Camera placement for video testing purposes only, obviously. You’ll want to hang yours up.

Also impressive is the infrared night vision. With little more than a nightlight in the room, we were still able to see our son quite clearly. When it’s quiet at night, audio is really all you need. But the addition of a clear video signal helped us determine when Max was simply shifting around and when he needed our attention.

The WiFi connection allows you to hook up multiple cameras that you can view at the same time, if necessary, and it also allows you to monitor the signal on your iPhone or iPad, not just your computer.

WiFi Baby HD is a universal app, so you’ll only have to pay for it once for your iPad and iPhone. However, considering the price of the WiFi Baby camera, you really shouldn’t have to pay for it at all. It’s kind of the whole point of the system, after all…to be able to monitor your child when moving about the house or while your iPhone is recharging on the bedside table at night.

But it’s really the camera itself that makes the WiFi Baby worth the price. $280 looks like a lot, but when you work it into the price of a nursery, the cost quickly gets absorbed. It’s a better investment if you’re on your first child, too, with more to come; you’ll only need to go through the set-up hassle once, and then it should serve you well until your kids are old enough to put themselves back to sleep.

It’s kind of weird that way…the sooner you can quit using the WiFi Baby, the happier you’ll be. But it’s good to know it’ll work just fine until then.

Appletell Rating:

Buy the WiFi Baby

Hot on the heals of yesterday’s Boxee for iPad announcement comes another one from the Boxee team. This time it involves the Boxee Box and streaming music. More specifically, Boxee has announced they now have a Grooveshark application that will allow you to stream all of your favorite music just as you can anything else through Boxee.

The application is free to try for a few weeks, but will end up costing you $9 a month (the price of a Grooveshark premium account).

If you want to try your hand at winning one of five Boxee Boxes or a free one-month Grooveshark account, head over to the boxee.grooveshark.com.

Read [Boxee Blog]

Late last week, Corel announced new photo software for iPhone, iPad and Mac users: Slingshot, a free photo-sharing app for iPhone; PostCard, a free app that turns photos into printed postcards; and QuickSort, a free Mac app that organizes photos and lets you link them to Facebook. We’d tell you more about it, but why do so when our friends at YourDigitalLife have already done the work?

Slingshot:

“With Slingshot you can share images from the program to Facebook or email to pre-selected groups of family and friends. All the photos you take in Slingshot are backed up in a private Facebook album as well.”

PostCard:

“You can customize your card with your own text and it’s printed on heavy card stock and mailed within 24 hours of placing your order. There’s delivery tracking too, so you can be sure it got where it needed to go.”

QuickSort:

“You can create customized keyboard shortcuts for controlling the program.”

In addition, Corel has released Beep Beep, another free app which turns the iPad into a virtual coloring book.

For additional details on the new Corel lineup, read YourDigitalLife.com.

If you were worried the folks over at Boxee were sleeping, worry no more. They’ve announced a slew of interesting updates/products this week. For starters, they now have an iPad app available for download in the App Store. One really neat feature about this is the sharing they’ve added between your iPad and your other devices in your home. For instance, not only can you stream content from your PC to your Boxee iPad app, you can watch your iPad app content on your Boxee Box. Yes, it does sound a lot like what the Apple TV and Airplay allow you to do, and that’s great!

In more minor news, Boxee has also released a bookmarklet and version 1.2 of their firmware for the Boxee Box. The bookmarklet simply makes it easier to keep track of the content you want to remember, while the firmware update brings a few changes. Namely:

• Filtering premium sources in the library such as Vudu, HBO Go, etc
• New “Featured Apps” section
• Updated App categories
• NFS and AFP support (and improved SMB/CIFS support)
• Improved HTML5 support in the browser
• Support for OS X Lion as a source for video files
• Option to receive “Beta Releases” of the firmware

Via [Boxee Blog]