For example, if you want to own Moom ($10) and Time Sink ($5), we’ll expect you to donate $13 to your favorite charity. Usher ($35) and Desktop Curtain ($5) would mean a $38 donation. Buy everything in our portfolio for $9, and donate $109 to charity. It’s pretty simple math, regardless of which apps you’re interested in buying. (These donations should be tax deductible, too, but please don’t take our word for that!)

You may wonder how we’re enforcing this donation requirement. The short answer is we’re not. We both firmly believe in the goodness of people, and we’re confident that those who purchase on Thursday will do the right thing. Will everyone? Absolutely not. But we believe that many will, which will hopefully lead to some nice contributions to a wide range of charities.

Sure, we could have kept prices at their normal level, and donated proceeds to a charity or two of our choosing. But we feel strongly that you should be able to pick your own charity, and we hope that by dropping the apps’ prices to $1 for the day, we’ll get more participation than we would by simply donating our proceeds.

So if you’ve been waiting for a good excuse to purchase one or more of our apps, Thursday’s the day. You get the apps you want at an amazing price, you get to choose who gets the money you saved on our apps, and you get to feel good about supporting a charity.

All we ask (ask, not require) is that you let us what you did with the savings. You can either send us an email with the details, or just tweet about it, and copy @manytricks on your tweet. We’d love to know how much money was donated, and to which charities, if you feel like sharing that information.

Happy Holidays!—Peter and Rob.

All Usher users should upgrade to 1.1.6, either via in-app updating or from the Usher web page; the changes we’ve made to the external media section of Usher will prevent you from accidentally removing media from those external sources. App Store buyers will have to migrate to the direct version, as explained in the linked post, in order to get 1.1.6.

The short version: They all work.

The slightly longer version: To the extent that we were able to test all features in all apps, they all work in Mountain Lion. But there are just two of us, and thousands of features to test. So please, let us know if you find any issues. You can do so by going to the support page for any app (i.e. Moom’s support page), which list a few ways to report issues.

We also have three app updates today that fix minor issues in Mountain Lion—and resolve some other bugs and add some new features.

Get Leech 2.1.1 (release notes), Usher 1.1.5 (release notes) and Butler 4.1.13 (release notes) via in-app updating.

Note: If you’re an App Store purchaser of Usher, you should migrate (for free) to the direct sales version. Here’s how and why.

Usher is our powerful movie management tool; its mission in life is to bring order to the chaos that can be one’s collection of videos. To help you get the most out of Usher, this how-to covers setting up Usher’s main Library folder, adding more storage space, and moving movie files to a new hard drive (replacing an existing smaller drive).

Basic Library folder setup

Our recommended setup for Usher is to create your main Library folder on your machine’s boot disk, regardless of whether you intend to keep any movies there or not. By having the main Library folder on your boot drive, you’ll be able to see all your movies, even if they’re stored on a not-currently-connected external drive; you can even edit those movies’ metadata without them being physically present.

(If you’ve got a machine with more than one hard drive, and the extra drive (or drives) is always connected, feel free to place your Library folder on that drive. It’s only drives that are transient in nature that can be problematic as Library folder locations.)

If you simply install Usher and run it, this is the setup you will get—the main Library folder is created in your user’s Movies folder, within an Usher folder we create there. While you don’t have to use this arrangement, we strongly recommend that the main Library folder reside somewhere on your boot drive, or other always-there drive. (You can choose a new location for the Library folder on the Library tab of Usher’s preferences panel.)

After you’ve used Usher for a while, assuming you’re actively growing your movie collection, there’s a good chance you’ll find yourself running short on drive space. Thankfully, Usher makes it really easy to add additional storage space to your collection.

Add more storage space

Usher uses something called Supplementary Folders to help you easily and infinitely expand your library. Let’s say you’ve been keeping your collection on your MacBook Pro’s boot disk, but it’s filling up, and so you’d like to add an external 1TB FireWire drive to the mix. After buying the drive and getting it set up, adding this new storage space to Usher is a very simple process:

1. Create a new folder on the external drive; call it whatever you like, but something that reminds you that it holds Usher movies might serve as a nice memory minder in the future.
2. Open Usher’s Preferences, and go to the Library tab. Click on the Supplementary… button, then select Add Supplementary Folder… from the menu that appears.
   
3. In the dialog that appears, navigate to and select the folder you created in step one.

And that’s that—almost. You probably also want to enable this setting, also on the Library tab of Usher’s Preferences.

Now when you drop movies into that folder in Finder, Usher will sense them and automatically add them to your library. (You could leave the pop-up portion on ‘report’ if you don’t want Usher to automatically add all new files to the library.)

Move movies to newly-added space

Once you’ve got your additional space created, you may want to reorganize your library, moving movies from (in this example) the internal hard drive to the newly-added external hard drive. You may be tempted to do this in Finder, but please don’t!

Do not use Finder to move your movies! Let Usher do the work, so that all file references can be properly updated. If you use Finder, Bad Things™ may result.

To let Usher do the work, Control-click on any movie (use Shift-click and/or drag to select multiple movies, then Control-click on one) and select Move to Library Folder from the pop-up menu; this will slide out a sub-menu, listing all the available Library folders. Choose the one you want, and the selected movie(s) will be moved to that folder.

This process can take a while, especially if you move a ton of huge movies. In such cases, letting the move operation run overnight isn’t a bad idea.

Keep track of your movies

Once you’ve added one (or more) Supplementary folders, you may find it hard to remember which movies are stored in which Library (as Usher presents everything as one large combined library). You can solve this problem using a special Smart Playlist that will show your movies organized into subfolders, based on where they’re physically stored:

As seen in the screenshot, this special Smart Playlist shows you exactly where your movies reside; select one of the listed folders, and you’ll only see the movies that are presently located on that drive. This makes it very easy to find the movies you wish to move between Library folders.

To create this Smart Playlist, select File > New Smart Playlist. On the Criteria tab of the new window that opens, enter some criteria that will be true for 100% of your movies. In this example, I’ve used Date Added is within the last 500 years, which should cover even the oldest clips in my collection.

Next, click on the Subdivision tab, and set the pop-up to ‘Subdivide matching movies by Library and Supplementary Folders.’ You can check Fan Out if you wish; if enabled, selecting the Smart Playlist folder (“Movie Locations” in my example) will show you the contents of all subfolders. When done, the two Smart Playlist setup screens should look something like this:

Click OK, and your Smart Playlist will be created, showing movies in your Library and Supplementary folders, as well as those stored in iTunes, iPhoto, and Aperture.

Replace an external drive

Building off my previous example, assume more time has passed, and the previously-huge 1TB drive is now nearly full. You’ve got your eyes on a new 4TB external, but you don’t have the desk space required for two external drives. (If you’ve got the space, you don’t need to do what we’re about to discuss; you can just plug in the new drive and add another Supplementary folder, as detailed above.)

If you want to replace a drive that’s being used as a Supplementary folder in Usher, there are two ways to do it: neither is particularly hard, and both will take some time.

Scenario One: You name your new external drive exactly the same as the existing external drive.

If this is the case, your drive migration is greatly simplified. Quit Usher, then install and use SuperDuper or Carbon Copy Cloner. These apps allow you to clone (create an exact copy of) one drive onto another drive. Clone the old 1TB drive onto the new 4TB drive, then disconnect the old drive, leaving the new one connected. Launch Usher, and everything should just work: You’ll have all your movies, in their same locations, but with storage space to burn (or should that be rip?).

Note that you can also use Apple’s Disk Utility to do this, via its Restore feature. Read the section on Disk Utility (near the top) in Macworld’s More ways to move data to a new Mac article for details on that method.

Scenario Two: You want to give the new external drive a different name than the existing drive.

This is the more-complicated scenario, though it’s still not too difficult. First, create a new folder on the 4TB drive, and add it as another Supplementary folder within Usher. Using the Smart Playlist you created in the previous section, select all the movies that are in the old Supplementary folder, Control-click on them, and select Move to Library Folder from the pop-up menu.

You should see your newly-added folder as one of the available destinations; select it, then…watch a movie or read a book or take a little trip, because (assuming you really do have 1TB of movies) this step is going to take a while. A long while, in case the preceding links didn’t make that completely obvious. Don’t panic, though, the massive migration will eventually finish.

Once the process finishes, select Library > Library Folder > Usher > [name of old Supplementary folder] > Remove. (Note that “Usher” will be whatever you named your primary Library folder.) This will remove the now-empty old Supplementary folder, leaving you with the main Library folder, and the new Supplementary folder on the new 4TB drive.

Wrap up

Usher’s ability to infinitely expand your library is one of its strongest features; never again need you fear running out of space for your library. If, however, you can’t just add new drives to your machine due to space or technical restraints, you can use the “replace an external drive” section of this guide to migrate your collection to a new, larger drive.

Why not update the Mac App Store version of Usher, too? We’d love to, but when we submitted the update, Apple raised some issues with some of Usher’s functionality (not new functionality; just newly-raised issues).

While we hope we’ll be able to update MAS Usher in the near future, we can’t set a timeline for such an update, nor can we say for certain what features may or may not be in that update. Sorry to be vague about this, but the situation is still in flux. Once we know the final outcome, we’ll post a follow-up explaining exactly what will happen with MAS Usher going forward.

So what’s new in 1.1.4? Mainly a number of small bug fixes and usability improvements. About the most-visible change is the addition of a Batch Rename entry in the Usher menu, to prevent accidental batch renaming when selecting more than one movie. For the rest of the fixes, see Usher’s release notes page.

As always (for direct customers only, again), you can get the update via in-app updating, or through Usher’s web page.

• Butler: Compatible, though it’s likely we haven’t tested 100% of everything that Butler can do.
• Desktop Curtain: Compatible, but with some issues if you use Spaces or Mission Control. We’re working to find a solution to those issues.
• Displaperture: Compatible.
• Key Codes: Compatible.
• Keymo: Compatible.
• Leech: Leech’s browser integration feature only works with Firefox in Lion. We’re investigating getting the other browsers working again, and will post any updates here on our blog.
• Menu Bar Tint: Compatible.
• Moom: Compatible, as of latest 2.2 update.
• Name Mangler: Compatible.
• Open-With Manager: Not recommended and not tested in Lion.
• Safari Guardian: Not compatible with Lion. It won’t cause problems if installed, but its features won’t work. (Note: Safari 5.1 in Snow Leopard also breaks Safari Guardian.)
• Service Scrubber: Not recommended and not tested in Lion.
• Time Sink: Compatible.
• Usher: Compatible.
• Witch: Compatible, as of the 3.7 update.

As noted above, if you find certain features in our apps that don’t work in Lion, please let us know!

Time Sink’s update resolves an issue where certain apps with non-standard (internal, not public) naming conventions weren’t picked up by Time Sink (release notes). Usher’s update solves two issues, one with lost Notes fields when working with multiple movies at once, and the other with when changes to the Tags field are saved (release notes).

As usual, you can get updates from the in-app updater, or by downloading new copies of the app from our web site. (App Store customers, these updates have been submitted for approval, but have not yet been approved. We’ll post a message when they’re available.)

If you’re good at math, you’ll quickly realize that’s “over $2 less!” than Witch costs when purchased directly from our site. So why is it cheaper on the Mac App Store than directly from us? One simple reason: the App Store version of Witch lacks the pop-up window previews available in the version for sale on our site. Why not? As of now, we’re not certain that the method we use to show those previews will pass muster with the App Store reviewers, so we chose to leave them out of this initial release.

Everything else, though—including the ability to assign Command-Tab as the Witch trigger—is there. (OK, one other thing you won’t find is in-app updates, as the App Store app itself handles those updates for you.)

None of our other App Store apps are missing a key feature, so this was new ground for us. After talking it over, we decided that the lack of previews was worth a couple dollar reduction in sales price, at least until we know for sure if we can get them in or not.

So that’s why Witch is cheaper on the App Store than here on our site. If you like the image previews, and want them now, then you should buy Witch on our site. If you don’t think you’ll need image previews, you can save yourself a couple bucks by purchasing the App Store version instead.

We’re thrilled to have our fourth app (joining Name Mangler, Time Sink, and Usher on the App Store. And here’s a little secret…we’ve submitted a fifth app, and it’s now in the review queue for approval. Which app? Well, that piece of information will have to remain undisclosed for just a bit longer…stay tuned! (Note to Butler fans: no, it’s not Butler 5, sorry!)

You can get the updates via in-app updating (this can be enabled on the Updates tab of Name Mangler and Usher’s Preferences, and on the About tab in Witch’s System Preferences panel), or by downloading the full versions from our web site.

So what’s new? As always, the release notes page for each app (Name Mangler • Usher • Witch) provide all the details, but here are some highlights:

Name Mangler 2.3.3

• The help files have been completely rewritten in the new Many Tricks’ style. For you users of Advanced mode, there’s even a handy function reference that lets you navigate directly to each available function.
• In expired-trial mode (after 25 launches), Name Mangler now limits features (five files renamed at once, no droplet use) instead of presenting annoying dialogs with countdown timers.
• Name Mangler no longer accepts files dragged and dropped directly from iPhoto or Aperture. Because these programs use an internal database, all renaming should be done either before the photos are added to the programs, or within the programs themselves.

Usher 1.1.1

• Usher can now manage Elgato TV recordings (playback will be handled by the Elgato EyeTV player).
• A new Save As contextual menu lets you save a selection of movies, in their native format, to a folder of your choosing. This is basically ‘export without conversion.’
• Usher should now use less memory usage during some operations.

Witch 3.5.8

• Using a hidden pref (detailed on the release notes page), windowless apps can be forced to the bottom of the switcher panel when used in application-specific sort modes.
• Updated help files, and numerous other small fixes and improvements.

Note that both Name Mangler and Witch skipped a minor version number. We did this to keep the version numbers in sync between these releases and those on the Mac App Store (Name Mangler is there already, Witch is still in review).

While it’s not quite that simple to mark a video’s start and stop points in Usher, it’s really not much harder. Read on for the quick how-to, in both text and video forms.

So far, it’s been an interesting day, just watching the sales charts trying to figure out what they mean (we don’t get real-time data, so we don’t really know what’s happening with total sales). We did a fair bit of of work to get our apps ready for the store, though, so it’s very gratifying to finally see them there on launch day.

For those who prefer “traditional” software distribution, don’t worry—we’re not going away from that, just taking advantage of a new sales channel. We have apps (Butler and Leech, at least) that can’t be sold on the app store, and we have others (Witch) that have slightly different functionality. So our direct sales model isn’t going away because of the Mac App Store.

Also, we’ll always keep our apps “in sync” to the extent that the App Store rules allow us to do so. That is, if we update Time Sink on our web site, the App Store version will get that same update, and vice-versa1. Due to Apple’s review process, it may occasionally take a bit more time for the changes to reach the App Store, but rest assured, they’ll get there (assuming Apple’s approval, of course).

Our objective with both our App Store apps and our “traditional” apps is simple: to deliver compelling Mac programs that are a delight to use, and to do what it takes to keep our customers satisfied. So whether you want to purchase through the Mac App Store, or via the web, or via our in-app purchasing module, we’ll be there for you.

(1) The two sales channels are distinct, and require different builds of our software. So you can’t update your Mac App Store version of Name Mangler with a download from our site, and vice-versa. If you purchase from our web site, your app has a built-in updater that reminds you when it needs an update. If you purchase from the Mac App Store, the Mac App Store itself will tell you when there are updates to install, and you’ll do the updating via the Mac App Store app.

The big news in Usher 1.1 is the new Notes field. Many users had been creating a Notes Property, but there were problems with this: it was only one line, and you couldn’t use a comma, as Usher would then split your text into separate values. In Usher 1.1, Notes is now our third information type, to go with Tags and Properties. To better reflect all three of these information types, we’ve changed Tags and Properties to Metadata throughout the program.

Notes are written in an auto-expanding free-form text field on the Metadata panel. (If you had previously created a Notes property, its text will show in the new Notes field.) As you enter text, the field will resize as necessary, and eventually, scroll bars will appear. So for all of you who felt trapped by the limitations of your one-line Notes Property, free your fingers to go crazy with the Note field’s new capabilities.

What’s really nice is that Notes is still technically a Property field, which means that text is searchable, and the expanded Notes field is usable in Smart Playlists—we’re not sure why you might want to do this (as opposed to putting such values in Tags or Properties), but you can if you want to.

The other changes in Usher 1.1 (including reduced memory usage during movie ‘crawling’) can be read about on the Usher release notes page. As always, you can download the full version from Usher’s product page, or (much easier) use the in-app update, which you can enable in Usher’s preferences.

This 15-minute video walks through the Name Mangler interface, demonstrates each of the renaming functions, shows you how to create and use droplets, and explains the program’s preferences. See the ‘Video Introduction’ section of the Name Mangler web page for viewing options—you can choose between a smaller-but-usable 512×384 version, or the supersized 1024×768 original, which is over 80MB in size.

On to the next one now…

• Name Mangler 2.3: We’ve added support for user input in Advanced mode; this allows some user interaction with droplets, for example. To accept user input, use the new [prompt "Text user will see"] action. You can read more about this in Name Mangler’s in-app help. [Release notes]
• Time Sink 1.0.1: Fixed a problem where certain dialogs would appear behind other windows when Time Sink was used in menu bar mode, thereby blocking Time Sink from capturing data. [Release notes]
• Usher 1.0.4: A few bug fixes, including one that would cause Usher’s movie processor to stop while the Info window was onscreen. [Release notes]

As usual, you can download the full apps from each program’s page, or just check for updates using the built-in updaters within each program.

• Leech 2.0.7: We’ve updated the version of SIMBL we bundle, so setting up browser integration works again on Mac OS X 10.5.x machines. There was one other small fix (a localization issue). [Release notes]
• Name Mangler 2.2.4: After investigating a couple reports of Name Mangler not working, we figured out that users were unchecking all filters. This would essentially disable Name Mangler. So as of 2.2.4, you can’t do that any more. Also fixed a bug that caused the Change Case mode to fail when renaming files containing accented or any other decomposable characters. [Release notes]
• Usher 1.0.3: Usher received the most attention this week; make sure you check out the release notes page for the full scoop. The highlights include a new Add to Library menu item (to make it simpler to add things to your library), the addition of Date Created to List view mode, and a new entry in the contextual menu that lets you quickly mark a movie—or group of movies—as watched (or unwatched) without having to first open them.

As always, updates are available via in-app updating, or you can download the full programs from their respective web pages.

If you think these minor changes are exciting, make sure you come back Thursday, when we’ll be adding a brand new item to the Many Tricks’ menu! We’ve been sampling it ourselves for a few months now, and we think it’s a delicious addition to our existing menu…er…product line—we can’t wait to see what you all think of it, too!

We’ve also added New Folder buttons to dialogs (where it makes sense, as when selecting library folders), and expanded the in-app help file to cover Supplementary Folders, which are a very cool Usher feature.

There are some other minor bug fixes and improvements, too—read the release notes for the full scoop.

As always, the update is available via in-app updating, or by downloading the full program from Usher’s web page.

Such was the case here…for most people, Usher worked perfectly. There were a few folks with some issues, however, so Peter’s been burning the weekend hours addressing those issues. Instead of waiting for Monday, we thought we’d push this update out today, to get it in everyone’s hands as quickly as possible.

A few users reported that Usher wouldn’t see their iTunes videos; Usher 1.0.1 should fix that problem. We also had reports from users with large collections of movies in non-native QuickTime formats (e.g. mkv files) about incredibly slow initial import times. Usher 1.0.1 includes much better logic for handling these movie formats (which are very slow to work with in QuickTime), so the initial import stage should go much faster.

You can read about a couple other small changes on the Usher release notes page. You can get the new version via in-app updating, or directly from the Usher web page.

The list of features is immense; check out the Usher web page to get a sense for its capabilities. We’ve really worked hard to make this a solid release, as yFlicks was a much-loved and much-used program that, sadly, stopped working a couple of major OS X releases ago. While Usher is the spiritual successor to yFlicks, the number of new and/or greatly improved features, along with the completely revamped interface, make it essentially a brand-new program. That’s why we tested Usher with our largest-ever group of beta testers—Usher is a large, complex program, and we wanted it to be as issue-free as possible.

Keep reading to see a small sampling of Usher’s features, and for full information on purchasing or upgrading to (including free upgrades for many yFlicks users) Usher.

There are a ton of new and/or improved features in this update to yFlicks, which is why we’ve also chosen to reset the version counter: this release will be Usher 1.0 to reflect the scale of the changes. Due to the sheer number of changes, there are also probably some 1.0-type issues in Usher…and that’s why we’re releasing it now as a limited public beta. We’re looking for people who are willing to really help us test Usher and find all those little glitches–so we can remove them before we ship Usher.

We’re looking for 25 to 30 testers for Usher’s limited public beta, but we’re interested in people who can really help stress test Usher. To that end, we’re looking for people who meet at least one of these three criteria:

1. Existing yFlicks users with between 1 and 3,000 movies in their collection.
2. Existing yFlicks users with over 3,000 movies in their collection.
3. Non yFlicks users who are looking for a tool to help them manage their collections.

If you’d like to participate in this public beta, please send me an email, with the subject set to Usher beta. Important: In the body of the message, please let me know which of the above groups you fall into, and include the (approximate) number of movies in your collection. If you’re selected for the beta, you will receive a copy of Usher to test, along with further instructions on how to go about helping us test Usher.

As an incentive to help test, the top three testers–based on reporting the most (confirmed) issues–will receive a free license for all of Many Tricks’ products. So what are you waiting for…drop me an email and get your name in the hat for one of the limited testing spots!