DEVONtechnologies (http://www.devon-technologies.com) has released updates for all its freeware applications and services: EasyFind, PhotoStickies, ThumbsUp, XMenu, BlueService, CalcService, and WordService.

All have been updated to the latest frameworks and optimized for Mac OS X 10.5 and 10.6. In addition new features have been added and bugs fixed.

Eric Böhnisch-Volkmann, president of DEVONtechnologies, says EasyFind 4.6 features a new path control giving direct access to the path of a found item, columns can be customized, the Escape key can be used to close the Quick Look preview, and the asterisk operator again matches all items. Searching whole volumes is much faster, the visual appearance has been improved, and EasyFind comes with a brand new application icon.

PhotoStickies 5.6.2 comes with a new Italian localization and many detail improvements; XMenu 1.9.1 has been localized to Italian and Spanish, opens the alternative menu also on a right-click, and comes with a reworked application icon, too. Finally, ThumbsUp 4.5 creates thumbnails up to twice as fast and supports transformations as used by older versions of Preview.

Services are one of the most overlooked features of Mac OS X, says Böhnisch-Volkmann. And they are brilliant: Services are added to the system without any hacks, they don’t need to inject code into other applications — prone to causing crashes — but still provide contextually relevant functionality system-wide. Böhnisch-Volkmann says that if you don’t use services yet, BlueService, CalcService, and WordService will give you a reason to start doing it,” says Eric Böhnisch-Volkmann, President of DEVONtechnologies.

BlueService 1.4, CalcService 3.4, and WordService 2.8 have been adapted to the requirements of Mac OS X 10.6. Snow Leopard presents services now in a much more prominent spot in the contextual menu. In addition, CalcService shows a new Copy button for copying results to the clipboard after using Calculate & Show.