Apr 18, 2008 Apr 20, 2008 Saturday April 19, 2008
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Give your iPhone a little extra juice (video)
Posted by Dave MertenHow does 7 hours of video playback sound when you're flying on a trip? The All-New mophie 'Juice Pack' is designed to extend the time you can Rock, Talk, Surf and Send with your first generation iPhone.
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Crucial Introduces Memory/System Scanner For Macs
PC users have long been able to avoid retail prices and save some money on RAM by hitting Crucial's PC System Scanner site to analyze their current configuration and have the program give upgrade options (then go to deal sites and really save some $$). Mac users can now do the same thanks to the Crucial Mac System Scanner. After acknowledging the terms & conditions (you *do* read those, right?) the download begins. When finished, you have to mount the disk image and you'll notice pretty quickly that the developers actually bothered to make a nice dmg background (a detail that is increasingly being left out of many packages). I don't recommend moving the app to your Applications or Utilities folders since it's a one-shot deal for most folks and you can always re-download it the next time you need it. Double-clicking the app icon runs a program which dumps an html file on your system (it put mine in file:///var/folders/NZ/NZ2aeHCxEy4bRcChWavt0++++TI/-Tmp-/sysoutput_utf8.html) and opens that up in your browser – you may want to make a note of where it stored yours and make an effort to remove it once you're done with the tool. It turns out that the all the utility does is put the contents of the output of system_profiler -xml (you can run that yourself from a Terminal.app session) into a hidden text area and submits it all to Crucial. As a result, the fine marketers at Crucial now know the details of your whole system, including printers, drive layout, etc. This is great marketing info for them and their partners, so you may want to think twice about using the tool if you are at all concerned about potential privacy issues. The report is similar to what they provide from a PC scan and includes details of your current configuration and upgrade paths. The utility is a Universal Binary so it should work fine on older systems. (I may be setting up an older PowerBook for my son in the near future, so I am in the market for an upgrade on that system unlike the result you just saw for my MB Pro, but I'll probably be skipping the Scanner for that one). If you don't mind Crucial knowing all your system secrets, give the utility a try and drop a note in the comments to let us know if they identified your configuration properly. Also drop a note if you have suggestions on alternate ways you use to find the information required to upgrade your Macs memory. I may do a compilation post with the results (full credit if you leave that in the comment) if we receive enough good entries.
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Exclusive: First look at Starbucks iTunes service
Apple is starting to roll out a new iTunes service in Starbucks cafes in the United States that’s a result of a partnership between the two and AT&T. Starbucks announced in February a plan to deliver AT&T Wi-Fi service at more than 7,000 company-operated locations across the United States. Alan Weinkrantz IM’d be about his experience [...]
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Feeds application brings native Google Reader support to iPhone
Posted by Dave MertenHow would you like to check your favorite RSS feeds natively on your iPhone by way of Google Reader? Wouldn't that be convenient?
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Use Fluid as a Muxtape jukebox complete with CoverFlow
Internet Jogging has posted a simple and fun tutorial on how to use Fluid as a Muxtape jukebox complete with CoverFlow. Fluid is an application that allows you to seemingly save websites as stand-alone applications. It even lets you give them a custom icon so that Muxtape, Facebook, etc. look like real applications in your Dock. Muxtape is a fairly new website that allows you to upload... [read more at MacMerc.com]
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Psystar store is back up, orders on the way
The Mac clone maker has obtained a new payment processor and is once again taking orders for computers with Mac OS X Leopard preinstalled.
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TUAW Best of the Week
Filed under: Features, TUAW Business, Weekend ReviewIt's the weekend. W00t! Time to kick back, relax and read the latest installment of TUAW's best of the week, where we gather up our favorite posts for your easy clicking enjoyment. Luckily, Mac users only had to restart their Mac once this week after a Safari update. Free alternatives to the Macheist bundle + moreSick of paying for Mac software? Well, there's tons of freeware developers on the Mac. Find out where to get some freeware that serves as an alternative to the Macheist bundle.Mac 101: fine tune your Mac's volumeYou know, for those library visits.First commercial Hackintosh announced by PsystarLooks like it's time for Apple to issue a C&D (if they can find an address). PBS videos for educators hit iTunes UPBS normally has great educational content, now educators can get it directly from iTunes. Sega producer talks about Super Monkey Ball for the iPhoneYeah, just what every iPhone owner needs ... games. Oh? You say you really want games? OK ... fine then!AppleTV update 2.0.2Even the little guy needs an update sometimes. Looks like Apple gave that little guy a little update, eh? Nothing new to see here, move on folks. Mac 101: schedule your scriptsBrett showed us how to create a script that will run when called upon by an iCal alarm. Pretty nifty. Fring: VOIP on iPhone--live blog tryoutErica, as always, did an awesome job at another live blog. This week's live blog included a chat with the folks over at Fring (the iPhone VoIP client). Starbucks offers free iTunes "Pick of the Week"Good to see a coffee company giving away things for free; how about giving some coffee away?More bundle fun with MacUpdate Promo Parallels dealIf you're tired of the other software bundles out there, why not try one that includes Parallels?Two more Apple Stores confirmed for New York City Ahem, Apple, I think you're forgetting about some other states, aren't you? iTunes: Free TuesdayGet some free tunes.Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments
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European Tech Roundup
In our new regular weekly round-up of news in Europe, here’s some of the broader stories that may be of interest. • The European Union is never very far away from reaching for the regulation trigger, so it was refreshing this week to see that it was warning member states that people should not be criminalised for the file-sharing of copyrighted material if they are not profiting from doing so. I guess they’ve heard music is going free.
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Terminal tip: easy email attachments
Filed under: Terminal Tips If you're looking to automate the sending of emails with attachments quickly and easily (and aren't too concerned with having some glamorous stationery), Terminal is once again your friend. It's possible with Mail.app and AppleScript, but there are a few pitfalls and, for most purposes, a simple shell command will do the trick: (echo "This is the message body";uuencode Desktop/yourDoc.doc yourDoc.doc)|mail -s "Test attachment" someone@adomain.com The magical command in this one is uuencode, which is used to encode and decode binary files and can be used on just about any file type. The two arguments in the command above define the name and location of the source file and the name the file should have when it's received. The parenthetical statement at the beginning combines the results of the echo and uuencode commands which are then piped (|) to the mail command. The mail command, having received the body text and attachment, is told to append a subject (-s "Subject") and send it to the address specified. If you wanted to send a longer text file - with line breaks, perhaps - as the body, you could save the text in an external file and replace the echo statement with cat myfile.txt. By adding a little complexity you could make a shell script that takes arguments, making the automation a little more flexible. But TUAW reader Adam was wondering how to send a photo he'd taken automatically using AppleScript (triggered by a Mail Rule). So here's an AppleScript implementation that doesn't require opening Terminal or dealing with Mail.app scripting: set msgBody to "This is the body of the message" set msgSubj to "Message subject" set mailDest to "someone@adomain.com" do shell script "(echo '" & msgBody & "'; uuencode /Users/you/Desktop/pictosend.jpg pictosend.jpg) | mail -s '" & msgSubj & "' " & mailDest Make sure you remove any line breaks from that last line. This obviously requires a predetermined image name, but that could be made a variable as well and used as part of a larger script. We hope this helps, Adam!Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments
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PayPal: “No intention� of blocking Safari
In response to my piece yesterday that PayPal may ban Safari for being unsafe, PayPal public relations firm sent me the following email stating in no unspecific terms that “We have absolutely no intention of blocking current versions of any browsers, including Apple’s Safari, from our website.” Hi Jason, PayPal is developing features to block customers from [...]
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Newspapers could learn from Psystar brouhaha
We're in day five of the tech community's obsession with Psystar, that odd little company in Miami that claims to be selling Apple-like computers. There are still plenty of questions about Psystar. Shoot, we still don't even know for certain if Psystar is legitimate. But there's ...
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FileMaker Gets Personal With Bento Database
Long ago and far away -- about 1982 or 1983 -- there was a database called "Nutshell" which used the simple metaphor of index cards to let you store and use information. I remember Nutshell fondly even if it and the MS-DOS platform that supported it are only fit for computer museums. A Macintosh version of Nutshell evolved into the successful software program FileMaker, which I think is one of the better database programs around, available for both Macs and Windows-based PCs.
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iPod sleeve takes fashion to its logical, meaty conclusion
Filed under: Portable Audio, Portable Video What's better than having a nice leather or cloth iPod sleeve to show off to your friends? If you're thinking one made of imitation meat -- you're dead right! Apparently, a company in Japan is under the impression that you want to wrap your music player in a grade A lookalike, undoubtedly to the thrill of your vegetarian friends and family. Of course, don't just get one for the shock value -- this thing oozes pure, sophisticated style. If you've got ¥6,800 (or about $66) and dignity to spare, it can be all yours.[Via DVICE]Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments