Here's a nifty little application. DesktopLyrics is a free utility that displays the lyrics of the song that's currently playing in iTunes on your desktop. You can position it where ever you like, choose your font and then just let it run. Pretty neat, right?

Here's the catch. The lyrics must be in iTunes already, as DesktopLyrics doesn't fetch them. You could use an application like GimmieSomeTune (which we've written about before) to do this, or, if you're a masochist, enter them by hand. But I've thought of a better idea.

I'm teaching myself Japanese with the fantastic podcasts at JapanesePod101.com. Something I like about them is that they embed each lesson's transcript in the file itself. So, tapping on my iPhone's screen as I listen brings up the text of the lesson.

Now, I can launch DesktopLyrics and follow along with the transcript, both the Japanese and the English translation, on my desktop as I listen. I love it. Check it out, and happy learning!

[Via LifeHacker]

Until September 8th, you can buy Office for 30% off with the purchase of any Mac at Apple resellers. Visit this Microsoft Promo Page and choose "Save Now".

Students can get additional discounts by purchasing Office with academic pricing. This Student Pricing page offers tips about ongoing student discounts that aren't limited to the September 8th cut-off.

A cheap copy of Office ... what more could you want?

Kevin Rose is at it again, with a brand new round of rumors about iTunes 8, supposedly premiered next week at the big Apple iPod event. Did I miss the meeting where we all declared him king of iPod rumors? King or not, he's got what he claims is inside information, including a writeup about something called the "Genius" sidebar, which creates recommended playlists for you, a new grid view (like Delicious Library?), and a new music visualizer.

Additionally, Rose's tipster mentions HD TV shows in the iTMS, and reiterates the previous rumors of new IPod nanos and Touches. None of these things are a huge surprise -- while the Genuis system will certainly be interesting to see (and make fun of) if real, HDTV and the new iPods are old news in Rumorville by now.

Is it OK if we hope for some faster and easier iPhone syncing with a new version of iTunes as well? Whatever is coming next week, we'll find out all about it then.

Another instant messenger app for iPhone has been released, joining the ranks of such stalwarts as Pairingo, MobileChat, and AIM for iPhone. Shape IM+ All-in-One Mobile Messenger for iPhone (click opens iTunes App Store) supports AIM/iChat, MSN/Windows Live Messenger, Yahoo!, ICQ, Jabber, Google Talk and MySpaceIM. All public IM systems can be connected through the one client, and all messages come into one shared inbox.

Shape Services GMBH is currently offering the iPhone application for free, while the Windows Mobile, Palm OS, Symbian, and BlackBerry versions retail for $29.99. Get it while it's free!

Thanks to ZaP for the tip!

Geeks love to try out new applications, but hardcore nerds (like me) like installing new utilities.

At first glance, CheckUp by App4Mac is a system monitor. Use it to keep track of your processor(s), RAM, disks, network activity and processes. But that's just the beginning.

The UI is very nice. Each set of functions gets its own window. For instance, the "Profile" pane displays information like your machine's serial number, OS, processor(s), IP address, MAC address and more.

The "System" pane lists all installed applications and their version numbers, plus all operating systems that your machine will support, including Windows and Linux. A drop-down menu lets you switch between installed applications, fonts, drivers, Internet plugins, preference panes and login items.

The re-sizable window moves from pane to pane with a snazzy 3-D transition (either cube or swap) and is very easy to read. I especially like the "Processors" pane which lets you pop out the meters measuring processor activity.

Here's the cool part of CheckUp. You can use it to monitor a remote computer, either on your LAN or across the internet. This is very handy for IT pros who could use a quick-and-dirty glance at a far-away machine.

The purchase fee of $29US includes lifetime updates. If you're looking for a stylish system monitor that's actually fun to use, give CheckUp a try.

Sun xVM VirtualBox 2.0 has arrived! We did a detailed review of VirtualBox 1.6 back in July, and now a shiny new version is available. If you want to set up a virtualization environment on your Intel Mac, but don't want to spend money on Parallels or VMWare Fusion, xVM VirtualBox 2.0 is a free and full-featured package that may fit your needs very well.

What's new in version 2.0? Mac users will see the following changes:

• 64-bit OS guest support (only on 64-bit hosts, as one might expect)
• New native Leopard user interface on Mac OS X hosts
• New-version notifier
• Guest property information interface
• Host Interface Networking on Mac OS X hosts
• Framework for collecting performance and resource usage data (metrics)
• Added SATA asynchronous IO (NCQ: Native Command Queuing) when accessing raw disks/partitions (major performance gain)

A list of bug fixes can be viewed after the break. xVM VirtualBox 2.0 can be downloaded here.

TUAW's going Back to School! We'll be bringing you tips and reviews for students, parents and teachers right up until the bell rings.

This is the third and final installment in the "Back to School: Writing Tools" series (parts I and II are here). To round out our roundup, we'll take a look at some (possibly) unexpected solutions, as well as some utilities which can aid any writer. Read on for some final thoughts on the current array of Mac writing tools for students, teachers, professors ... and the rest of us, too.

Sandvox is the WYSIWYG web editor from Karelia that's won praises from users and the design community (including an Apple Design Award) alike. You can read our previous coverage here.

This week, Karelia has released version 1.5, which offers a slew of changes. You can use Sandvox to publish to any webhost (including FTP, SFTP and MobileMe) or create a blog. The pro version lets you edit the HTML and both the pro and basic version include attractive templates that you'll actually want to use. Changes to version 1.5 include

• Major improvements to media processing, making it easier than ever to create and publish multimedia and media-intensive sites
• Improvements to all pagelets, including an enhanced Contact Form and a brand new YouTube pagelet
• Seven all-new designs, plus enhancements to other designs, bringing the total to 50
• New blogging features, including a Collection Archives pagelet to better manage and display older entries, automatic navigation links between entries, and "continue reading" links to better manager longer entries

There's much more, and you can read the full release notes here. As we said, Sandvox is a very nice tool for people who want to put up a page or site with no fuss. Sandvox requires Mac OS 10.4 or later, is a Universal Binary and comes in both pro ($79US) and standard ($49US) versions. Version 1.5 is a free upgrade for registered users.

"Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn..." but not for long. A company called Digital Jokers, in conjunction with a subsidary called Mayhem Studios, is bringing HP Lovecraft's cuddly, horrible, insanity-inspiring Great Old One to the iPhone in the form of a graphical adventure game called Call of Cthulhu: The Darkness Within. It looks like fun, although if the laughable trailer is any indication, they'll need to do some spell checking and additional translation before the game actually goes live.

Still, Cthulhu fans will slog through some pretty bad software if it means there's a good Lovecraftian story in the mix. We'll keep an eye on this one -- graphical horror-based adventure on the iPhone done well could make for a good (or should we say evil?) time.

[via Macworld]

Spore Origins has wriggled its way out to the iTunes store for the iPod. The game is a slimmed-down version of the early microbial stages in the upcoming PC game -- in the main game, you'll be able to take your little microbes up through the evolutionary ladder all the way up to space travel, but in the iPod game, you just guide a little cellular organism around in the primordial muck, eating what's smaller than you and running away from what's bigger.

We haven't played the iPod version, but the iPhone version, which we got a hands-on with at E3 earlier this year, is due out later this week, according to the game's creator, Will Wright. Both games pale in comparison to the creativity and polish that the full Spore game will offer -- running a creature around in the muck isn't nearly as fun as guiding it through the history of time itself, and unfortunately, as we were told at E3, online play and character transfer never made it into the final version, so the portable games have no relation to the full game at all.

So what you're left with is a little arcade game, which probably isn't actually worth the $5 it costs. There are, after all, better games out there for less.

I thought Line Rider kind of "jumped" the shark (so to speak) when they sold out to McDonald's, but apparently the little sandbox physics game is still kicking around. InXile, the company that makes it, is working on a version for the iPhone. There was a version available for jailbreakers, but apparently the company put the kibosh on it when they found out.

Not much else to say about this -- Line Rider is currently available for free online, and if you like it there, you'll probably like it on the iPhone, too. Personally, it's more fun to watch than to play -- whenever I try to make a run, my little guy always dies on the first curve. But maybe with a little more iPhone-based practice, I can finally get him to do that loop-de-loop I've been wanting.

[via Touch Arcade]

If you haven't yet upgraded to Microsoft Office 2008, you're probably intimately familiar with the problem of receiving Office 2008 .docx (Word 2008) files; they're not natively supported by Office 2004. If you have updated that older version of Office to 11.5.0 and installed the Open XML File Format Converter for Mac, you'll be able to open .docx files in Word 2004.

Both the Microsoft Office 2004 for Mac 11.5.0 Update Package and the Open XML File Format Converter for Mac are available for free. Another way that you can resolve the .docx dilemma is to use Zamzar's online file converter (see screenshot below) to downgrade the .docx file to the .doc format. Choose the .docx file, select the file format (.doc) that you wish to convert the file to, enter your email address so that Zamzar can send the converted file to you, and then click the Convert button. You'll receive the converted file shortly.


This tip comes to you via Jenny Kortina over at The Apple Blog.

Just when you thought you just bought (or just finished paying for) Adobe Creative Suite 3, get ready to take out another mortgage for Adobe CS4, which will be publicly unveiled on September 23. AppleInsider conjectures the software will drop in October.

Adobe will be delivering several webcasts that day to showcase the new software to the public. You can register here to participate in the webcasts.

Improvements to Photoshop and Flash are expected to headline the event. Adobe did not release any details about how the software will be bundled, nor any pricing information. Full versions of Adobe CS3 can cost as much as $2,500 for new users, and $160 for those who want to upgrade.

Adobe released preview editions of Dreamweaver, Fireworks and Soundbooth in late May.

[Via MacFreaks and cnet.]

Two popular Mac developers have taken the time to blog the future of their applications. First, Marco Arment has written about his plans for Instapaper for iPhone and iPod touch. If you haven't tried Instapaper yet, you're missing out. Basically, the desktop version is simply a web bookmarklet that lets you collect weblinks on a single page.

Have you found an article you'd like to read when you have some free time? Click the bookmarklet and it's added to your Instapaper page.

The iPod touch/iPhone version syncs with your links collection so you've got them on-the-go. It works wonderfully, and there's both a free version [link] and paid pro version [link] in the App Store.

In his blog post, Marco writes "...I compiled a feature list for what I want in Instapaper.app 2.0, and it's huge. It's easily 6 months of work ... But if I can pull off the product I want for 2.0, I'll really have something amazing."

Meahwhile, Brent Simmons has written about NetNewsWire, the popuar RSS reader. All four of them. "I'm working on four apps. But they're all NetNewsWire," he says. Specifically, version 1.0.9 is almost ready for the App Store [here's the current version] while 3.1.7 is under development for the Mac. At the same time, Brent is working on versions 3.2 and 4.0 for future release.

Good luck, guys! We appreciate the dedication and love your applications. Keep up the good work.

TUAW's going Back to School! We'll be bringing you tips and reviews for students, parents and teachers right up until the bell rings.

Continuing the Back-to-School "sub-mini-series" on writing tools, this second post covers some great tools for compiling all of your thoughts, ideas and research into cohesive, structured documents. If you've never explored this category of applications, you might be surprised what the available options can do to improve your writing efficiency and lower the general anxiety involved with writing 10-page reports or lengthy creative writing assignments. I'll highlight a few cool ways to get those notes and floating thoughts from your notepad and your brain onto papers with large A's on them. Read on ...