I don’t often cover new product releases, but this year when I asked what you wanted me to cover at Macworld the resounding answers was “anything Thunderbolt”. Unfortunately there wasn’t much Thunderbolt on the floor at Macworld but a week earlier, at CES, Elgato had announced they were bring a Thunderbolt SSD (Solid State Drive) to market soon. If you listen to the Maccast you know I am a fan of Elgato’s video products, so it was awesome when I opened my email today and got the news their new SSD drives were now shipping. Technically, according to PR, they are shipping in Europe now and in the US in about a week (see the US doesn’t ALWAYS get stuff first), but who’s splitting hairs? This is “something” Thunderbolt! The new Elgato Thunderbolt™ SSD comes in two sizes. A 120GB version for $429.95 USD and a 240GB version for $699.95 USD. The enclosure is metal and pocketable and, since it’s SSD, there is no fan or moving parts so of course it’s completely silent. Likely though, the biggest deal about the drive is the speed. As you can imagine when you couple the performance of SSD with an advanced interface like Thunderbolt the results are amazing. According to El Ggato’s product page the Elgato Thunderbolt SSD is capable of transfer rates in the range of 270 MB/s¹, more than 3 times what you could get with a typical Firewire 800 drive. If you need a portable rugged drive with the fastest possible performance on your Thunderbolt Mac Elgato looks like they have you covered.

¹ Transfer rates on a 15″ Macbook Pro 2.2 GHz i7 using QuickBench 4 “Extended Test” (Read)

Shopping at TheGadgetLocker.com just got better! Cyber Monday(s) are here! Now, through the end of the year, every time you make a purchase at TheGadgetLocker.com on a Monday, you can get 10% off your order. Just enter the coupon code ‘cybermonday’ when you’re checking out, and you’ll automatically get 10% off your total purchase. Starting today (Nov. 26th) and lasting through the entire holiday season (up to and including Dec. 31st) take advantage of this great promotion to save you money when buying your favorite iPod and Mac accessories.

TheGadgetLocker.com founder and president, Joe Ryan, says, “We want to thank and recognize our loyal customers by providing them with great prices and deals throughout the holiday season, and not just on a single day.”

TheGadgetLocker.com guarantees delivery by Dec 24th for anything purchased by Monday, Dec 17th, provided that the item is in stock. This makes Christmas shopping easy!

For more information and to take advantage of this holiday sale, visit TheGadgetLocker.com.

Created Equal announced a major upgrade today for it’s tutorial software: TeachMac & TeachIT. Version 5 is now available for download at TeachMac & TeachIT. These applications are free to download, and give you access to over 150 Mac or Windows tutorials. Some titles are free, while others can be downloaded for a small fee. You can purchase each tutorial a la carte, or choose from one of several subscription plans which start at just USD$10.00.

I downloaded TeachMac to test it out, and it’s very easy to use! TeachMac has a very simple interface that you can use to search for & download tutorials on topics ranging from how to use iTunes to how to build your own Cocoa web browser. TeachMac makes it very easy to create your own customized library of instructional videos.

Along with other improvements, Version 5 now adds support for transferring downloaded tutorials directly into iTunes, making this content available to view on an iPod, iPhone, or the AppleTV.

“Whether or not content is exportable is determined by each author,” says Created Equal President, Byron Turner. “From now on, all materials we author will be exportable and we think most of our authors will do the same.”

TeachMac & TeachIT also allow you to create and sell your own tutorials, earning 100% of the sale price, as well as a percentage of the subscription price. Version 5 offers many improvements in this area, helping you to create better, more interactive content.

Created Equal is a non-profit educational corporation. Proceeds from the sale of subscriptions help to fund the Oasis Project, a permanent, long term sustainable domestic violence shelter and recovery center for women and children.

Intriguing Development, Inc. announced iRemember v2.1.1, an update to the company’s digital scrapbooking software for Mac OS X. iRemember 2.1.1 is a free update incorporating bug fixes, performance enhancements and support for Mac OS X v10.5.

iRemember is a simplified page layout application designed to turn a user’s digital photos into memories by preserving them as personalized scrapbooks. Simply drag and drop pictures from iPhoto or Finder into a template; then scale, crop, resize, rotate or add shadow effects.

iRemember comes complete with starter templates, backgrounds, and a clip art browser for searching through its over 20,000 pieces of clip art and embellishments. Everything needed to create eye-popping scrapbook pages is included – except your photos!

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Deep Prose Software announced today the immediate availability of Booxter 2.0.3 for Mac OS X. With Booxter users can create multiple libraries and smart lists to organize books, music, movies and comic books the way they want. Booxter supports both handheld and wireless barcode scanners and iSight video cameras to quickly add large numbers of items to a collection. It is easy to use, fun, and has many very powerful features.

Version 2.0.3 adds support for Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard and includes a number of improvements and fixes with importing, smart lists, scanning, and Spotlight searching.
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The latest November issue of macCompanion Magazine is now available online. This free PDF download is around 141 pages, including articles from leading reviewers.

Robert Pritchett notes the release of a very angry cat that has been in the bag for nearly 2 years and offers up how it is being treated in the media.
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CS Odessa today announces the release of ConceptDraw MINDMAP 5.2, a new version of its mind mapping business productivity software. The update adds Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard compatibility, Quick Look technology support, integration with iCal and renewed user interface that supports Leopard’s rich visual look-and-feel.

ConceptDraw MINDMAP 5 is an easy-to-use tool that supports mind mapping and brainstorming techniques as well as many other personal productivity methodologies. It provides businesses and individuals with an engaging and creative way to increase efficiency and productivity when organizing ideas and projects, or when communicating with a group of people.
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