Mar 3, 2009 Mar 5, 2009 Wednesday March 4, 2009
-
StatCounter launches free Global Stats tool
Posted by Dennis SellersStatCounter, which provides free website traffic information, has launched a new online research tool for media, analysts, bloggers, researchers and members designed to help them monitor Internet market share battles. StatCounter Global Stats is a free online service that records market share of search engines, browsers and operating systems including...
-
High growth forecast for mobile touchscreen technology
Posted by Dennis SellersThe touchscreen technology market will have a major influence on the mobile handsets industry in the near future, according to the ReportLinker research group. Though touchscreen technology has been in existence since the 1980's, it has come in to prominence only after the launch of the iconic iPhone.
-
Nero adds Nvidia CUDA acceleration
Posted by Dennis SellersNero, creators of liquid media technology, has previewed the latest version of Nero Move it, which now features support for the Nvidia CUDA architecture, at the CeBIT trade fair.
-
BlackBerry App World minimum paid price: $2.99
RIM's newly-named BlackBerry App World might be all set to compete with the other mobile app stores on the scene, but it's not going head-to-head on price: according to the developer docs, the first price tier above free is $2.99. That doesn't seem like much, but it's a little puzzling in light of how successful various less-expensive iPhone apps have been. Of course, RIM might just want its apps to seem more valuable to customers -- and maybe keep fart apps far from its business-oriented platform -- but we'll see how developers react when things go live. [Via CrackBerry]Filed under: CellphonesBlackBerry App World minimum paid price: $2.99 originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 04 Mar 2009 23:10:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments
-
Apple Gazette Daily 426 - Kindle on the iPhone = NO iTablet!
podcast sponsor link:Click Here to check out Audible! Today's Show: Kindle on the iPhone = NO iTablet! You can subscribe via iTunes, or by RSS feed, or… you can listen to the episode right here: In addition to that, you can also download the Apple Gazette Daily Widget and listen to every episode of the show right on your Dashboard. Click Here to download.
-
CyberTouch|AV announces 19-inch rack mount touch screen monitor
Posted by Dennis SellersCyberTouch|AV has introduced the ER1900, the latest addition to its line of touch screen LCD monitors. Available now, The ER1900 is a professional-grade 19.0-inch integrated touch screen LCD monitor designed specifically for 19-inch rack mount applications.
-
MacHeist offers free licenses for DEVONthink via Twitter promotion
Filed under: Software, Deals MacHeist is calling it a "TweetBlast," we'll call it savvy marketing, but you'll probably just call it "free software, woo!" In an effort to pump up the number of Twitter followers for the MacHeist challenges & software bundle, the team is offering followers (who are willing to post a promotional message) a free license for DEVONthink. The software, normally $50US, allows you to store your files and personal data in lots of structured, tagged and classified ways -- Brett previewed the 2.0 beta in December. Getting your free copy is pretty straightforward; you'll have to follow the MacHeist Twitter account, and then as noted you're required to tweet a promo message for the TweetBlast itself; not sure whether that's 'recursive advertising,' a recession-buster special or plain ol' viral marketing, but free apps are free apps. When you get DEVONthink, you'll also get Hyperspaces and Overflow as well. Also, participants should know that the DEVONthink licenses are for the soon-to-be-obsoleted 1.x version of the app, but if you want to roll your copy forward to the upcoming 2.0 version you'll be able to do so for the upgrade price of $20. Full details are at the MacHeist website.TUAWMacHeist offers free licenses for DEVONthink via Twitter promotion originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Wed, 04 Mar 2009 22:45:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments
-
The Daily Roundup: here's what you might've missed
MacBook Pro 17-inch unibody reviewWill previous 17-inch fans find a slam dunk or a dud underneath the unibody exterior? Amazon's Kindle for iPhone hits the App StoreSure, Amazon could pit the Kindle squarely against phone- and PDA-based e-book apps, but why not play both sides? Sprint's Palm Treo Pro set to make its debut on March 15thWell, March 15th looks like launch day for Sprint's Palm Treo Pro, and it's about time, after all, we've seen it rumored, unboxed, reviewed, and now finally you'll get a chance to pick one up. Other news of import iMac (early 2009) unboxing and hands-on Apple Mac mini (GeForce 9400M) unboxing and hands-on NAB throws down, sues FCC over white space internet Check out all our CeBIT 2009 coverage ZillionTV brings ad-based streaming content to the televisionJust in case hooking up ZeeVee's ZvBox and getting access to all available online media is too difficult, there's ZillionTV. RIM names its app store 'BlackBerry App World'What's bigger than a store, a market, or a catalog? A whole frigging world, that's what. Slumdog Millionaire goes from Academy Awards stage to Blu-ray disc March 31 Ask Engadget HD: Easiest-to-use HD media streamer? HTC's rumored 2009 lineup gets fleshed out with specs, dates Reception issues with North American Nokia 5800s to be fixed with firmware? The Daily Roundup: here's what you might've missed originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 04 Mar 2009 22:33:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.Permalink | Email this | Comments
-
mobileGuns coming to Apple App Store
Posted by Dennis SellersmobileGuns is an upcoming game for the iPhone and iPod touch. It will cost US$0.99 and be available at the Apple App Store
-
Scramble Live lets iPhone users play against Facebook users
Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Gaming, Software, iTunes, iPhone, App Store, iPod touchZynga has released a new iPhone game called Scramble Live, and while the game itself isn't anything really new -- it's Boggle, basically -- the technology is pretty interesting. They've already got a Facebook version up and running with over a million users, and the new app will let you play against other users, on both the iPhone and Facebook, in real-time. That's a pretty impressive hook -- rather than building up a new social audience, you can just carry away your Facebook friends and play with them while you're on the iPhone.Unfortunately, there's a catch (isn't there always?) -- the game's iTunes page says the live game is only available over 3G or Wifi, so us first-gen iPhone users are out of luck for that mode. But there's also a solo mode, as well as a "pass and play" version that you can use to play with people around you.The game's "on sale" at $2.99 until March 9th, when it'll jump back up to $4.99. If you're a fan of the Facebook version and want to try out some cross-platform gameplay, give it a look.TUAWScramble Live lets iPhone users play against Facebook users originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Wed, 04 Mar 2009 21:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments
-
Magic Bullet Looks 1.2
Red Giant Software is a company that develops special effects applications for film and video editing with credits in The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, Vanilla Sky, Grindhouse, and more. These applications are offered in two formats, as standalone applications or as plug-ins for most industry leading editing software. Red Giant offers up many software solutions but one of their most powerful is a color correction application called Magic Bullet Looks that is actually a plug-in for more powerful pro applications. What many of you may not know however is that this is a completely redesigned program from the original which allegedly had a slightly buggier interface and less options, and compatibility with only After Effects. The reinvention of “Looks” incorporates every industry standard video editor, a redesigned interface, and more advanced features. Magic Bullet is one of the most complex video editing applications I have used in a while, but thankfully it's also one of the easiest to use. This app is loaded with 100 look presets which are meant as a starting point, and literally allow infinite possibilities for color correction (which you can then save as a custom look). The time line is organized in to 5 parts: Subject, Matte Box, Lens, Camera, and Post, which helps in discerning which order to apply the effects. I found this to be both a burden and a blessing at times, in that it is nice having a guide for laying effects, but at certain times I wish I had the option of placing an effect in any spot on the time line, rather than where an effect is supposed to go. I was a bit skeptical of this application when I first installed it. I didn't believe an application that was so powerful could be so easy to use. The interface of Looks seamlessly integrates with Final Cut Pro or any other editor and jumping from Final Cut to Magic Bullet Looks is as simple as creating an effect for the selected clip, and customizing it. When I first installed Looks I was worried that it might slow Final Cut down, or cause my system to run a little slower. However, I was surprised when I witnessed no slow down. However I did notice that it took slightly longer to render my footage. Magic Bullet Looks flawlessly made my footage look like it was shot on 35mm, which is one desire every videographer has in common. It isn't easy to sell a piece of software for $399/$99 upgrade, but compared to the thousands of dollars you would spend forking out for a professional quality camera, this is a fraction of the cost without sacrificing much. I installed Magic Bullet Looks for Final Cut Studio 2, and after using this software on several projects of my own, I have fallen in love. These are before and after shots of footage I used Magic Bullet Looks on. The look here is a custom one I built myself, which is fairly simple to do. I found that the possibilities for looks was literally endless, and that this would be a great tool for someone working in this industry. Red Giant Software has an example page demonstrating various aspects of this application at work. Every filmmaker has one desire in common, and that is to create a distinct look for his or her footage. Whether that be wedding footage, or the next Oscar worthy film. The thing many people do not realize however is that being a filmmaker is similar to being a magician, in that neither want to reveal their secrets. The point is, the best effects are the ones you don't see and Magic Bullet Looks passed with flying colors. Green your IT. Save Money. Save the Planet » Register at $295 / $495 regular » Hear Microsoft, IBM, Dell and Cisco execs at GigaOM's Green:Net.
-
app4mac releases Sequence 2.0 for Mac OS X
Posted by Dennis Sellersapp4mac has updated Sequence for Mac OS X 10.5 (“Leopard”) to version 2.0. Sequence is a tool for capturing and saving a screenshot or a screencast of your screen to the format of your choice.
-
Scramble Live comes to iPhone, iPod touch
Posted by Dennis SellersZynga, a social gaming company, has launched Scramble Live, a mobile version of its word game, exclusively for the iPhone and iPod touch. It's available for US$2.99 (for a limited time, then it goes up to $4.99) at the Apple App Store.
-
Goodbye, FireWire 400
Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Hardware, Humor, Peripherals, Apple, Mac mini, MacBook, Mac ProAs Macworld notes, this is it for the ol' Firewire 400. With the introduction of the new Mac mini the other day and the refresh of the Mac Pro and iMac lines, the old version of Firewire is left only on the white MacBook. It's evolution at its finest, and our good friend Nilay Patel over at Engadget put together this perfect video showing just how hard it is to say goodbye to yesterday.As I said on the Talkcast a long time ago when this was first hinted at, it's not a huge loss in my eyes. This is an outdated standard, and if you've got anything sitting around that absolutely requires a FireWire 400 port (and you've already upgraded completely to a computer that doesn't have one), then it's time for an upgrade. Those happen, you know -- there's a reason they're not selling Polaroid film any more. Besides, FW800 ports can easily drive your FW400 gear with a $8 cable.Nostalgia, however, is a powerful force. So it's with a damp hankerchief and wet eyes that some of us will bid farewell to FireWire 400. Long live FireWire 800!TUAWGoodbye, FireWire 400 originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Wed, 04 Mar 2009 20:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments
-
Flickr Extends Video Uploads to its Free Users
Flickr, the popular online photo sharing service, has announced that it is now extending its video service to its free customers, allowing them two free uploads a month. read more
-
Toy Bot Diaries drops to 99 cents, is giving away $10,000
Filed under: Gaming, Developer, iPhone, App Store, iPod touchToy Bot Diaries is a fun little series of platforming games with a physics twist -- you probably saw it on those early iPod touch gaming commercials. It features a little robot jumping around levels with a grappling hook and some magnetic boots. If you haven't picked it up yet, now's the time to do so. IUGO has lowered the price on the whole series, and you can get each of the three versions of the game for just 99 cents a piece. At $4, the game wasn't bad, but at just a buck, it's definitely worth picking up.And that's not all -- they're also giving away $10,000 (and a smattering of gift cards and game codes) for playing through the games. You need to pick up all three games, and then pick up 25 of the "datapad" collectibles from each game, for a total of 75, at which point you'll get a chance to enter your email address for submission into the contest. Getting the datapads isn't hard at all, we're told, and the game is a good time anyway.The contest ends on Monday March 16th, and IUGO says they're not sure when the prices on the games will go back up, so now's probably the time to get with the playing. No better way to promote a game than make the price cheap and give away lots of money.TUAWToy Bot Diaries drops to 99 cents, is giving away $10,000 originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Wed, 04 Mar 2009 19:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments
-
Doodle service works with iCal
Posted by Dennis SellersDoodle.com—the free, no registration required, Swiss-based web scheduling service—has come to the United States. Doodle sports a polling function enabling invitees to vote for their preferred day and time (and more, like location and desired activity) from a list of options provided by an event's organizer.
-
An iPhone remote for a media-center Mac
Air Mouse Pro makes your iPhone a remote control for a home-media Mac.
-
Video: Hama's iPod touch racing wheel exemplifies overkill
While most of Hama's CeBIT booth consisted of random USB drives, cases and other sorts of low-rate accessories, this particular low-rate accessory grabbed our hearts and wouldn't let go. The absurdly titled Game Wheel Speed-X is evidently geared to work with Apple's latest iPod touch, though we reckon an iPhone 3G should slide right in without too much effort. Clearly, this aims to be a Wii Wheel for your favorite Apple handheld, though we have to wonder how many individuals plan on carrying this ridiculously large piece of plastic around with their touch. Actually, we don't have to wonder. Jump past the break for a couple of video demonstrations.Gallery: Hama's iPod touch racing wheel exemplifies overkillContinue reading Video: Hama's iPod touch racing wheel exemplifies overkillFiled under: Cellphones, Gaming, PeripheralsVideo: Hama's iPod touch racing wheel exemplifies overkill originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 04 Mar 2009 18:59:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.Permalink | Email this | Comments
-
March 24 Apple Event - Now What?
The internets spilled forth a juicy rumor this week that Apple was planning on having an event on March 24. With the Mac releases yesterday, we're pretty sure if the event happens, it won't be about them. So what will the rumored event bring us? Let the speculation commence!read more
-
App Review: Smack Me — Play Rough With Your iPhone
App Quick Stats Smack Me $2.99 iTunes Link These days, gaming is all about getting physical: tilting and shaking, shouting and whispering and now apparently the occasional bit of pinching and smacking. Sounds like fun! All this talk of touching reminds me of a great toy I had, back in my student days: Bop It. A group of us would play together, flicking, spinning, bopping, pulling and twisting to a never-ending funky beat. The experience was intensely physical, surprisingly fun and overwhelmingly frustrating. Clearly inspired by Bop It, Smack Me transports the toy's increasingly furious antics to our handheld Apple devices. The question is, does the iPhone have what it takes to support such a tangible experience? Thrill Me! Ever since hearing Add N to X's electro-anthem Plug Me In, I've known that robots can be a little naughty. It's no surprise then that FunMobility's latest iPhone game features a naughty bot repeatedly demanding to be pinched, shaken and smacked. It may be painful but we all know he really loves it. Literally getting to grips with the gameplay is super-simple. Ito the robot is a demanding sort of guy — he'll be barking orders at you in his electronic voice. If Ito shouts, “Smack me,” you tap the screen, if he hollers, “Shake me,” you shake the iPhone and, if he firmly requests, “Pinch me,” you give the screen your best multi-touch pinch. There are three game modes — Easy, Medium and Hard. Completing the Easy mode also unlocks two extra orders from Ito: “Freeze me,” which is kind of a curve ball as you're meant to stay perfectly still, and, “Lift me,” where you'll have to quickly raise the iPhone (a vertical shake, if you will). The limited, but moderately engaging, gameplay is wrapped up in the most fantastic graphics and sound, like a special candy for geeks: it looks and sounds delicious, the audiovisual experience is akin to having a retro rainbow blasted straight in to your brain-box. The music bleeps and bloops along, faster and faster, as Ito barks his digital orders at you. The ever-changing soundtrack is accompanied by an continuously shifting visual as each of the robot's requests arrives accompanied with an odd explanatory image too. Disappoint Me! Once you've played a few rounds and given the robot a good pinching, shaking, smacking, freezing and lifting, there's nothing else to it. It's the same thing, ad infinitum but increasingly faster, with different music. Indeed it's fun for a while but there's just no depth — nothing beyond the initial ten minutes of play. Plus, there's no true multiplayer mode either. Where Bop It really came in to its own was multiplayer mode: there would be hours of secret solo practice before the toy inevitably came out at a party with everybody wanting to grab at this strange, noisy object. The iPhone isn't designed for fast-paced pass-and-play games and, rightly so: it's no fun to watch folks slap 'n shake your iPhone then throw it to the next person to do the same. It's sado-masochism for tech-fetishists and I'm just not in to that. All that said, the game does feel like it's missing some kind of formal multiplayer element. Summing Up If I judged Smack Me based upon the first ten minutes of play, I would be exalting its delights. The artwork captures that classic 8-bit vibe in such a way that my inner-geek is awkwardly jumping for joy. The sound is old school lo-fi and frequently funny — locking in with the graphics like two missing pieces from a giant retro jigsaw. Ten minutes passes though and, assuming you unlock the extra functions, you've seen it all, and done it all, repeatedly. You'll get bored, feel disappointed at spending three bucks on this, hit the home key and check your email, Ito's tinny robo-voice fading in to the distance. The issue is that the game doesn't have enough depth, particularly in relation to its price. Now if this was a quick-fix 99 cent time-waster, my opinion may well be different. Unfortunately it's not 99 cents, it's three whole bucks and, as such, my opinion isn't wholly positive. This is fun, but fun that is priced way above its station — despite the polish — due to a lack of depth. Green your IT. Save Money. Save the Planet » Register at $295 / $495 regular » Hear Microsoft, IBM, Dell and Cisco execs at GigaOM's Green:Net.
-
MacJury looks at the Kindle 2's lack of text-to-speech support
Posted by Dennis SellersIn a new edition of The MacJury, the jurors weigh in on the Kindle 2's lack of text-to-speech support.
-
TUAW Bookshelf: iPhone in Action
Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, iPhone, iPod touch, TUAW Bookshelf I've never found book reviews to be terribly helpful -- technical book reviews even less so, as how one learns differs from person to person. Some iPhone devs out there learned simply by poring over Apple's copious documentation. Others have been poking at the iPhone's innards since pre-SDK days, learning as they went from forums and good old hacking. But once the NDA lifted, the floodgates of iPhone dev books opened. Each book and each publisher has a different angle both in content and presentation. Each book may appeal to different people and different learning styles with different backgrounds (not to mention the numerous sites, blogs and video resources out there beyond what Apple provides). Over the course of 2009 we'll be taking a look at some books in a new series called TUAW Bookshelf. We won't just be covering developer resources, either. There's a wide world of Apple-related reading out there, so stay tuned as we pull from our personal libraries and share our thoughts on what's available.To kick things off I read iPhone in Action by Christopher Allen and Shannon Appelcline, published by Manning. I wound up reading this first because one of the authors threw a few copies at me while at Macworld (sorry, I don't know who you are and I can't seem to find your business card!). We've got a few to give away, but look for that in another post this month.iPhone in Action is designed to be a soup-to-nuts intro to almost everything you can develop for the iPhone. This includes web apps, which was the book's main focus until the SDK was announced while they were writing. I don't think shifting focus to the SDK is a bad thing, and as near as I can tell it didn't hurt the content. In fact, I thought this book would make an excellent primer to Apple's mobile platform efforts. Having taught technology for six years, I can say this is the book I'd use for a 100-level course in developing for the iPhone. I'm not saying it will make you into an expert overnight, and I'm not saying you can't come to the table with zero dev experience, but as a starting point, it is wonderful. To find out why, keep reading...Continue reading TUAW Bookshelf: iPhone in ActionTUAWTUAW Bookshelf: iPhone in Action originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Wed, 04 Mar 2009 18:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments
-
Apple's market cap higher than GE's
Posted by Dennis SellersThe market capitalization of Apple has surpassed that of General Electric, reports Blogging Stocks. Apple had 2008 revenues of US$32.5 billion, while GE had 2008 revenues of $182.5 billion.
-
MacBook Pro 17-inch unibody review
There's not much that can be said about the 17-inch version of the MacBook Pro that hasn't already been said about the 15-incher (and to some extent, the MacBook). Still, the big, big brother of the family has a few key differences that make it stand out from the rest of the gang. The first being its non-removable battery, built out of tech which Apple claims will result in groundbreaking lengths between charges. The second difference, available only as an option, is a non-glossy display -- an addition which many have pined for since Apple's full throttle decision to move to extremely high-glare screens. Are these changes compelling enough to induce users to upgrade? Will previous 17-inch fans find a slam dunk or a dud underneath the unibody exterior? Read on for the full scoop.Gallery: MacBook Pro 17-inch unibody unboxing and hands-onContinue reading MacBook Pro 17-inch unibody reviewFiled under: LaptopsMacBook Pro 17-inch unibody review originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 04 Mar 2009 17:42:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.Permalink | Email this | Comments
-
Inner Fence offers credit card processing solution for the iPhone
Posted by Dennis SellersInner Fence and Merchant Focus Processing are teaming up to offer merchants a one-stop shop for accepting credit card payments on their iPhone.
-
New iPhone app to send Deadheads over the edge
S.F. rock photographer Jay Blakesberg teams up with digital media company Mosaic Legends to bring you the Grateful Dead Photomosaic App for iPhone and iPod Touch.
-
Mark/Space releases Fliq Docs for iPhone, iPod touch

Posted by Dennis SellersMark/Space has released a free app, Fliq Docs, which works with the Mac and PC versions of Fliq to allow iPhone and iPod touch owners to take files and documents wherever they go and share them with others. 


-
Apple software updates for March 4
Posted by Dennis SellersGlobal Delight has released Voila 1.1, an update of its image capturing, annotating and sharing tool that sports the ability to capture a region from the screen in rectangular, circular, polygonal or free hand form. The upgrade adds additional sharing options, annotations and other features.
-
March 4 'Macsimum Podcast' now available
Posted by Dennis SellersThe Macsimum Podcast for March 4 is now available here and the RSS feed is here.
-
'Macsimum Recommended Reading' for March 4
Posted by Dennis Sellers“Apple's price hike on new Mac range: Apple has raised the Australian prices on a range of new Mac computers unveiled overnight in a move that will test consumer loyalty in the current economic climate.”—Sydney Morning Herald
-
TUAW Review: The Haptique hard shell case
Filed under: Accessories, Reviews, MacBookAs someone who usually likes to go "commando" with his tech, I was highly skeptical as to the usefulness, at least to me, of the new Haptique hard shell case for the 13" aluminum MacBook. Made by the good folks at Uniea out of ABS plastic and designed to be hard on the outside, but soft and protective on the inside, this product is made to help keep your precious laptop from getting any dents, scratches or other blemishes that a somewhat soft and shiny Mac can get while in use.After using the product for a couple weeks and it most-definitely providing protection for my MacBook in several situations, I'm happy to say that my reservations about it were completely unfounded. In fact, this product has the virtue of being not only very useful, but rather unique in that it works exactly as advertised -- not something you always see with products these days.Removing the Haptique from the packaging and attaching it to my shiny aluminum MacBook could not have been easier. You just slide the MacBook into the bottom piece, then attach the top piece and that's it. Once done, your MacBook fits snugly inside its hard protective case ready for the bumps and grinds of your daily life.The designers have, of course, seen fit to include spaces for all of the ports on the side of the MacBook and for the optical drive. Plus, they've made sure to provide ample holes for ventilation in the rear so your Mac doesn't have a problem with overheating. All in all, the Haptique hard shell case is a great product made all the better by its simplicity. Much like Apple products, it just works. And really, that's all you can ask.The Haptique from Uniea comes in several colors including blue, green, black and pink and retails for $49.95. That may seem like a lot to some, but to protect your investment in a MacBook that sells for at least $1299.00, its a rather small price to pay for this level of protection. Check 'em out.TUAWTUAW Review: The Haptique hard shell case originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Wed, 04 Mar 2009 17:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments
-
Cherple now accessible to businesses via premium features
Posted by Dennis SellersCherple, an application that enables the sending and receiving of free SMS messages between personal computers and mobile phones, is now available to business through enterprise offerings that can be branded to serve any SMS need.
-
Bird Electron's Takotsubo "octopus trap" speakers are all kinds of odd
Bird Electron loves rolling out the crazy little speakers and such for your listening pleasure. The company's newest pair, the Takotsubo speakers, are modeled on Japanese fisherman traps. In this form factor, however, we doubt they'll do much beyond catch some wild stares from your friends, but they sure are cute! Don't expect to be blown away by the sound, but they're available now (in Japan only) for ¥5,000 (about $50). Check out another photo after the break.[Via Akihabara News] Continue reading Bird Electron's Takotsubo "octopus trap" speakers are all kinds of oddFiled under: Misc. GadgetsBird Electron's Takotsubo "octopus trap" speakers are all kinds of odd originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 04 Mar 2009 16:55:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments
-
CNET News Daily Podcast: Green-tech start-ups adapting to recession
How some green-tech companies have changed strategies when funding dried up; a new way to watch TV; and Amazon releases e-book Kindle app for the iPhone.
-
Microsoft may let Windows 7 users turn browser off
According to Chris Holmes, build 7048 of Windows 7 includes Internet Explorer as one of many Windows components that can be turned on or off via a Windows Features dialog box. In the public beta version, IE8 is not on that list.(Credit: Chris123nt.com) Microsoft has included in recent ...
-
SkyWorks releases new games for iPhone, iPod touch
Posted by Dennis SellersSkyWorks has announced new games for the iPhone and iPod touch: Mental Blocks, Poker Match Up and 3 Point Hoops. All are available at the Apple App Store.
-
News: iLounge announces JBL On Stage Speaker Giveaway
iLounge is pleased to announce the JBL On Stage Speaker Giveaway, our Giveaway of the Month for March. In this month's giveaway, JBL and iLounge are giving away ten JBL On Stage 200ID Loudspeaker Docks for iPod and iPhone to ten lucky readers. To enter, simply fill out and submit the form on the giveaway page—the giveaway will end on March 31, 2009 at 11:59PM Pacific Time. Good luck! ...
-
Livescribe releases Desktop for Mac 1.0
Posted by Dennis SellersLivescribe is shipping Livescribe Desktop for Mac version 1.0. Since its public beta release in November last year, the Livescribe Desktop for Mac software has been downloaded by over 20,000 Pulse smartpen owners.
-
Free Ambiance Classic available to pacify upset users
Filed under: Software, iPhone, iPod touch Ambiance creator Matt Coneybeare is temporarily offering a free copy of version 1.0 as a gesture of goodwill to the negative backlash to the 2.0 upgrade of the iPhone audio app.When released last summer, Ambiance (link opens iTunes) -- along with aSleep -- introduced "environmental enhancers" to the iPhone. These apps would produce sounds ranging from rain and storms to pieces of technology to white noise. The intended effect is to drown out background noise, such as the annoying leaf blower currently being used outside my window, and let you concentrate on your work or get some sleep.Ambiance 1.0, now renamed to Ambiance Classic, was well-received. In a review done back in August, Brett noted that some of the sounds were surprisingly good and that the application was easy to use. As with aSleep, Ambiance Classic included all of the sounds with the application. Over time, Ambiance gained features and additional sounds, swelling up to a download that was more than 50MB (Ambiance Classic clocks in at 51.1MB).Continue reading Free Ambiance Classic available to pacify upset usersTUAWFree Ambiance Classic available to pacify upset users originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Wed, 04 Mar 2009 16:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments
-
OWC offers memory upgrades for 17-inch 'unibody' MacBook Pros
Posted by Dennis SellersOther World Computing (OWC) has announced the OWC 8GB DDR3 Memory Upgrade Kit and 4GB DDR3 Memory Upgrade Modules for the new Apple MacBook Pro 17-inch “unibody” models.
-
'Take Control of Running Windows on a Mac,' new from TidBITS
Posted by Dave MertenInstalling and running Windows on an Intel-based Mac has become commonplace, but doing so most effectively still requires expert knowledge. Fortunately, the new Take Control of Running Windows on a Mac, Third Edition brings readers 167 pages of hard-won advice, helping readers determine the best installation option for their needs,...
-
WWNC '09 official announcements and the 2010 bug
Filed under: Accessories, Hardware, Portables, Apple HistoryEach year, a crew of Newton users, developers and devotees gathers to celebrate the little green device, discuss projects, share resources and generally have fun. As a Newton owner myself, I've wanted to attend one of these for years.This summer's event features sessions by Grant Hutchinson, Ryan Vetter and (tentatively) Paul Guyot, who will discuss NPDS, modern uses of the Newton and the Einstein Project, respectively. You can get a full list of presentation topics here.One topic that I'm sure will be on everyone's mind is the 2010 bug. Briefly, the Newton's clock has a 17-year life, which was born in 1993 and ends in 2010. January 5, 2010 to be exact. Some users have reported erratic behavior when they've tried to schedule calendar events after that date, sometimes requiring a hard reset to escape. This seems to be limited to Newton OS 2.1 devices only.Eckhart Köppen is working on a fix, but it won't be easy, as a system patch will be required. Former Newton team engineer John Arkley had this to say in 1999:"...Building and testing a System Update is complex and expensive process and no single engineer could do it. The Newton OS only supports ONE system patch, so ALL the existing 'fixes' and any new ones have to be combined together to combined to create the 'next' System Update."Still, Eckhart feels it can be done. From what I know of him through the NewtonTalk mailing list, I'm inclined to believe him. In the meantime, check out the "Ramp Up Clip" to get yourself in the mood. WWNC '09 will take place from July 31st - August 2nd in Vancouver, BC, Canada.TUAWWWNC '09 official announcements and the 2010 bug originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Wed, 04 Mar 2009 15:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments
-
locr offers geophoto services to the Apple community
Posted by Dennis Sellerslocr, a geotagging photo community and future supplier of travel photo books, and Houdah Software, a software company specialized in Mac OS X software, have jointly released an exclusive locr edition of Houdah Geo, a photo geotagging solution for the Mac.
-
Points Off for Windows? Assailing the 'Macs Are More Expensive' Assumption
Brave guy, Yair Reiner, for singlehandedly assailing the “Macs are more expensive” myth (or truism, depending on your particular worldview). In a research note on Apple's new desktops, the Oppenheimer analyst compared, spec-by-spec, the new Apple (AAPL) iMac, Dell's (DELL) XPS One 24 and Hewlett-Packard's (HPQ) TouchSmart IQ800t and concluded that the iMac offers a better value (click on chart below to enlarge).
-
In-depth review: Kindle 2, the Apple TV of books
Prince McLean, AppleInsider For its first year anniversary, Amazon gave its Kindle an all around hardware upgrade that has turned the quirky, cheap looking appliance into a streamlined and slick looking device. Will it be enough for Kindle 2 to hit a mainstream audience? In-depth review: Kindle 2, the Apple TV of books .As our original review of [...]
-
Why I’m Buying the New Mac Mini: Value Reconsidered
Yesterday, Apple introduced new hardware across its desktop offerings, and with one exception, the changes were pretty much hailed and welcomed by all. That one exception received, and continues to receive, fairly harsh criticism from all sides, including from our very own Tom Reestman, who argued that Apple really under-delivered with yesterday's update to their tiny all-in-one. Tom's main problem is with the value prospect of the new machine, since, as he rightfully points out, you don't get very much bang for your buck when you drop $600 on the entry-level machine. What's Wrong With It It is underpowered, it is overpriced, and, worst of all, as Gizmodo points out, it is not easily upgradeable after the fact, so most users would be advised to bite the bullet and pay Apple's extortionate rates for in-house upgrades, or risk breaking something. The hard drive options are almost insulting, with the max available upgrade being 320GB. That seems pretty clearly intended to force your covetous gaze towards the higher-priced iMacs, if you ask me. Even though I agree with Tom, and I truly believe everything I just said, I will still be buying a new Mac mini today…despite already owning an iMac and a MacBook. Maybe I'm masochistic, or just a compulsive shopper, right? While both of those things may be true, neither is the reason for my purchase. What's Right With It The reason I'm buying the Mac mini is that for my needs (not as a small business owner, and not with such specific tastes as some), and with my existing setup, it is the perfect home theatre PC. Before you protest, let me explain. Afterward, you can protest till the cows come home. The Current, Mac mini-less Setup I currently don't have a proper home theater receiver, or traditional book shelf or floor speakers or any kind of 5.1 surround setup. What I do have are two sets of Logitech X-series (two different incarnations of the same product, but released at different times) 5.1 computer speakers, three gaming systems (Xbox 360, PS3, and Wii), an HD cable box, and an LCD HDTV. To wrangle these mismatched, hodge-podge devices, I currently use a system of plugging and unplugging depending on what I intend to do, watch, or play, and what source I intend to use. Volume is controlled either remotely or manually, owing to my speaker sets lacking a wireless remote. I would provide a visual diagram, but I don't want anyone to become terribly lost and confused. There is one set of circumstances during which everything seems at peace with my home theatre setup. In order for everything to come together, I have to have my MacBook hooked up next to my TV, with both set of speakers attached to the headphone jack via a 2-mini stereo jack to 1-mini stereo plug adapter, and with the optical audio out from my TV attached to the MacBook input via a TOSLiNK to mini-TOSLiNK cable. Also, my MacBook's video out is hooked up to my TV's VGA input. Still with me? I also need a software helper, the freeware app called LineIn that lets you pass audio directly through your computer from the input jack to the output. This means that audio from the cable box will play through the speakers, or, if I watch something from my MacBook, I can hear that too. It also gives me remote volume control, thanks to Apple's own IR remote (of which I have many). All that sweet synchronicity falls apart every time I have to unplug my MacBook to work, or to travel, and in the meantime I trip on all the cables it takes for me to be able to use my computer from the couch. Then it's back to fumbling with plugs and switches, and turning dials to control volume. The Setup With the Mac mini The Mac mini will sit quietly in my TV console, nestled comfortably next to my cable box, all wires out of site. With the improved graphics card, it'll be able to handle full 1080p HD video without issue, and maybe even some older games. Thanks to LineIn, it will be doing the duty of a receiver, and thanks to my existing external media hard drives, which will be plugged in behind it, it will provide access to my entire media library, including movies, TV shows, and music. Buying a new home-theatre-in-a-box would cost me at least $600, and that's not for a good one. I don't need Blu-ray, because I've got it with my PS3, and even then, I suspect digital distribution will replace it in a few years anyway. I don't need an HDMI connection, although it would be nice, because the PC-in on my TV, even if it does required two cables (gasp!) works just fine. I'd like a larger hard drive, but I can live without it, thanks to the FireWire drives I already own. I don't want a screen, because that's precisely what's stopping me from using my iMac in the same capacity. The new Mac mini may not be the ideal computer for everyone, and I fully acknowledge its many failings. For someone like me, however, who's looking to leverage his existing components, and cares more about form factor than whiz-band features and specs, it might just be the perfect machine. Green your IT. Save Money. Save the Planet » Register at $295 / $495 regular » Hear Microsoft, IBM, Dell and Cisco execs at GigaOM's Green:Net.
-
If I were Bill Gates, I'd ban iPhones too
If he were Bill Gates, Don Reisinger would ban iPhones too. Would you?
-
Free O'Reilly 'Phone SDK Development' webcast Thursday, March 12
Posted by Dave MertenThe AVFoundation framework was introduced in version 2.2 of the iPhone SDK, and provides functionality for playing and mixing sound files, metering, and basic audio control. If you're adding simple sounds to your application, this framework can be implemented quickly and painlessly. In this one-hour webcast, author Jonathan Zdziarski provides...
-
MacTech Labs releases virtualization benchmarks
Posted by Dennis SellersMacTech Labs, part of MacTech Magazine, has released an extensive benchmark study of virtualization solutions running on Intel-based Macs. MacTech's goal was to see how well Parallels Desktop and VMware Fusion perform compared head-to-head.
-
Kindle for the iPhone, a first quick look
Out of curiosity, I installed the Kindle iPhone app this morning to poke around with it, and see what a "premium" book reader for the iPhone would be like. It's no surprise that the iPhone screen is a suboptimal display...
-
★ Observations, Complaints, Quibbles, and Suggestions Regarding the Safari 4 Public Beta Released One Week Ago, Roughly in Order of Importance
Performance The Safari 4 public beta is faster than Safari 3 and every other browser available for the Mac. (CNet’s Crave backs up Apple’s claim that Safari 4 is the fastest browser available for Windows as well.) One thing to keep in mind — and I’ll return to this distinction again — is that Safari, the browser application, and WebKit, the open source HTML/CSS/JavaScript rendering engine, are separate things. There are several web browsers that use WebKit, but not all WebKit-based browsers exhibit identical performance. Safari itself seems to be responsible for eking out some measure of the new performance gains — but, for the obvious reason that the rendering engine is responsible for the majority of the CPU-intensive work, WebKit is the source for most of the improvements. From its inception over 6 years ago, the WebKit team has adhered to an interesting policy regarding performance: The way to make a program faster is to never let it get slower. We have a zero-tolerance policy for performance regressions. If a patch lands that regresses performance according to our benchmarks, then the person responsible must either back the patch out of the tree or drop everything immediately and fix the regression. Common excuses people give when they regress performance are, “But the new way is cleaner!†or “The new way is more correct.†We don’t care. No performance regressions are allowed, regardless of the reason. There is no justification for regressing performance. None. This may sound like common sense, but anyone who’s ever worked on large software products will tell you that many teams, if not most, do not adhere to such a policy. The most common excuse is one that the WebKit policy doesn’t list: “We’ll fix the performance issues later.” The truth is that sometimes, later never comes. Safari started life in 2003 as a fast browser, at least by the then-low standards of Mac OS X web browsing, and it has gotten nothing but faster since. I fully expect other high-quality browsers like Firefox and Chrome to leapfrog ahead as they reach future milestones. What really matters isn’t whether Safari is the fastest web browser in the world, but simply that its performance, in actual use, is state-of-the-art. Prior to Safari, this just wasn’t true for any Mac web browser. The difference Safari and WebKit have wrought to web browsing (and HTML web view rendering system-wide) simply cannot be overstated. And so in a nut, the latest version of WebKit deserves nothing but accolades; but Safari 4? Well, we have some issues. Progress Even more so than the new style of tabs, Safari’s new progress indicator is the change I’m having the most trouble adjusting to. Every previous release of Safari, starting with the initial 1.0 public beta, displayed page load progress with a horizontal meter in the location field: Now, in the Safari 4 public beta, page load progress is indicated only by an subtle spinner at the far left of the location field: Most of what I wrote in my review of the original Safari 1.0 public beta in 2003 stands up remarkably well. But I was very wrong about the progress meter. I wrote: Progress Bar Behind Location Field Hideous. It looks like partially-selected text. Please scrap it. But I quickly grew accustomed to it, and soon grew to miss it when using other browsers. It was, I soon decided, a damn clever way to show progress in a way that was prominent while the page was actually loading, and without taking up any additional space on the screen after loading was complete. For sites that load quickly — and some sites do load nearly instantly in Safari 4, with a good network connection — it doesn’t make much difference. But not all web sites load quickly, and not all network connections are good. It’s not just that the new spinner is subtle, but that it is indeterminate — a simple spinner only indicates “not done yet”, with no indication as to how far along it is at the moment. This has nothing to do with WebKit’s rendering performance, just simple bandwidth and latency. A typical multi-megabyte PDF file might take a minute or more to load from a busy server or on a slow network, but the only feedback you get in the new Safari 4 is a small indeterminate spinner. Almost done? Not even close? You have no idea until the download is complete. It’s hard to see this as anything but a loss. So: Why? Safari’s designers aren’t talking, so we’re left to speculate. Estimating the progress of a page load is not an exact science — a determinate progress bar is at best an estimate. But Safari’s progress indicator seemed very accurate to me. At least it felt accurate, and that’s the entire point. Perhaps the idea is that Apple sees the modern browser as more than just a simple HTML document viewer — that it’s an entire software environment and runtime. But I still can’t see this as anything but a regression in the experience. A determinate progress meter has the psychological effect of making a wait seem shorter. That’s why the iWork suite shows a progress meter when you open documents. Yes, what you really want is for the web page to be finished loading, but in the mean time, it’s nice to know it’s a third of the way — no, now half, now two-thirds — done. The new progress spinner doesn’t make Safari slower, but it does make it feel slower. This time I really mean it: Please scrap it. The Tabs Safari’s new tab layout, placing the tabs directly in the window title bar, is a radical change. There’s no use addressing the specific details — good and bad — of this new arrangement, without first trying to figure out why Apple did this. Again, the designers are behind Apple’s wall of silence, so we’re left to speculate. Rule out the notion that Safari’s designers undertook this change lightly. This is a major change to an important feature that many users feel strongly about. My guess is that this is an attempt to bring tabbed browsing to the masses. The biggest and most important change is that the interface for the tabs is now far more prominent. In fact, previously, the entire interface for tabbed browsing was not visible in Safari by default — in a window with just one tab, Safari’s default settings were such that the tab bar was not shown. In Safari 4, there’s a prominent and unique “+” button that is always visible in the top right corner of every window (and the standard tic-tac button for toggling the display of the toolbar is gone).1 Because the interface to create new tabs is now obvious, I can only assume that the point of this redesign is to encourage more people to use, or at least try, tabbed browsing. But the problems with this new tab layout are significant. Conceptually, the basic idea is sound. Browser tabs are, effectively, a collection of separate browser windows grouped together in a single parent window. Safari’s new tab layout makes this a tab is like a sub-window metaphor more explicit. The anchor, the conceptual root, of a standard Mac OS window is the title bar, and in Safari 4, the tabs aren’t just in the title bar, they are the title bar. The placement atop all other window content is, yes, following the lead of Google Chrome. But Safari takes it one step further, and, I think, also one step too far. Chrome’s tab are still contained within a window title bar — they are obviously things contained within a window, rather than in Safari, where they’re more like multiple windows snapped together. Aesthetic comments aside (although by the standards of Windows software, I personally think Chrome looks good), the relationship between Chrome’s tabs and their parent window are more thoroughly thought-out than Safari 4’s. Safari 4’s tabs bring to mind the tab-style window title bars of the old BeOS. In Be’s system, title bars were only as wide as the name of the window, rather than stretching across the entire width of the window itself — reminiscent of the tabs on real-world folders. (Apple played with such an idea in 1980 while developing the graphical user interface for the Lisa and Mac.) Be’s windows could not be snapped together to create a single window containing multiple tabbed windows, but by holding down the Shift key, you could slide the title bar horizontally across the top of any window, the point of which was to allow you to manually arrange windows in a tabbed style. This movie demonstrates how it worked:2 Safari 4’s tabs are visually similar to the Be concept, except they are snapped together. But, conceptually and visually, Safari’s current implementation is a bit muddled. Tabs are their own thing, but when snapped together, the window as a whole is its own thing as well. But there’s now very little chrome (in the lowercase c sense) devoted the window as whole — pretty much just the triumvirate of buttons for closing / minimizing / zooming the window. Visually there’s no border between these buttons and the first (left-most) tab: Damien Molokai, in an overall defense of Safari’s new tabs, suggests simply adding a left border to the first tab and leaving some room to the right of the window controls, leaving a clear area intended for dragging the window itself: Molokai’s mockup is visually cleaner, but doesn’t go far enough to fix the conceptual mushiness. Sean Sperte suggests a more Chrome-like layout, leaving a border atop the window belonging to the parent window itself: That’s not perfect, but it’s clearly better than the actual tab bar design in the Safari 4 public beta. Consider: with the previous tab design, if you wanted to move a window you dragged the window, and if you wanted to move a tab, you dragged the tab. Now in Safari 4, if you want to move the window you drag a tab, and if you want to move a tab you drag the small grippy strip at the far right edge of a tab. This is more abstract, indirect, and worse. Chrome’s tab design suffers none of these problems. Yes, it saves 20 pixels of space to consolidate the title bar and tab bar into the same area. But design is always about trade-offs. Whitespace can serve a purpose. Take for example the margins in a book, which aid in readability and usability (by giving you a place to put your thumbs without obscuring the text). Safari 4’s tabs-in-the-title-bar arrangement is like a book with text set right to the very edge of the paper — it saves space at the expense of something useful. There’s also something unpleasant about the width of the tabs in Safari 4. In most other tabbed document UIs, including Safari’s old one, tabs don’t change their width or position dynamically until they need to shrink in order to fit an additional tab in the window — in a typical window, generally after the fifth or sixth tab. In Safari 4, the entire tab bar (which is to say most of the window title bar) is divided equally between all tabs. The old way, tabs only move and shrink a little, and only when you have many tabs in the window. The new way, tabs move and shrink a lot until you reach the point where there are many tabs in the window, making it harder to keep track of where a particular tab is. Consider a window with five tabs: the title of the second tab is on the left side of the title bar. Now close the third, fourth, and fifth tabs, leaving just the first two. The name of the second tab has moved all the way over to the right side of the title bar. When you do the same exercise in Safari 3 the second tab never moves. My guess is that space consolidation, combined with the desire to encourage tab use by typical users, is what drove this design. Most users only use what they see. They never saw tabs because there was no visual tab interface until after a second tab had been added to a window. And the tab bar was hidden when there was just one tab open because it looks like a lot of wasted space to have an entire tab bar containing just one tab, and if the tab bar isn’t shown by default in a new window, there’s no good place to put an obvious “+” button for creating new tabs, which button is necessary so that typical users see how to create new tabs. Hence the decision to combine the tab bar with the window title bar: always visible, no wasted space. But I think Safari’s designers over-thought the problem. It would have been better simply to turn on the “Always show tab bar” setting by default, add the new tab “+” button to the now-visible-by-default tab bar, and let users who are annoyed by the “wasted space” turn it off in Safari’s preferences. That’s pretty much how Panic’s Coda handles document tabs (except that Coda has no option to hide the tab bar, 20 pixels of space be damned): Tab Click-Through Click-through problems with Safari 4’s new tabs abound. You get it when you don’t want it: accidentally activating — or worse, closing — a tab when you simply wanted to bring a window forward. And you don’t get it when you do want it: for dragging a tab out of a background window and into another window. As a general rule you’re less likely to want click-through for clicking but more likely to want it for dragging — in Safari 4 you get the worst of both. Consider the common scenario where you want to drag a file from a Finder window in the background into your current frontmost window (regardless what app you’re currently in). You can just click-and-drag on the file in the background Finder window and drag it — the background Finder window does not activate when you click in it to start a drag. With the Safari 4 public beta, that doesn’t work. Say you have a frontmost Safari window wherein you are collecting several related tabs. You see a tab in a background window that you want to move to the front one. But as soon as you click on the grippy strip to commence dragging the tab from the background window, that tab’s entire window is brought forward, and, if the two windows overlapped significantly, now obscures the previously frontmost window such that you can no longer see the intended destination of the drag. When you drag something out of a background window, the window should not pop forward. When you click (not drag) in the title bar area to bring a background Safari window forward, in addition to the window activating, whichever tab you clicked on activates as well. So the more tabs you have open in a window, the smaller the region is within the title bar where you can click to activate the window without changing that window’s current tab. In every other app in Mac OS X, you can click anywhere on a window title bar to bring that window forward without changing the context of the window. But, if you click and drag on a background tab in a background window in Safari 4, the window activates but the tab does not. Even worse, click-through is in effect for the close buttons on background tabs in background windows, even though these close buttons are only visible when the mouse is hovering over them. Twice in the past week I’ve accidentally closed a tab when trying to activate a background Safari window. My guess is that Apple chose to make background tabs’ close buttons and grippy strips only visible when the mouse is hovering over a tab to reduce the appearance of clutter. But hiding the controls doesn’t eliminate the actual clutter — a Safari 4 title bar containing five or six tabs is littered with dangerous spots on which to click or drag. Because of click-through, you must now be careful about where and how you click in the title bar of a background Safari window; that’s not the case for any other app on the Mac. Tab Colors One of the best things Apple introduced in Leopard was a consistent, single style for regular windows, with increased contrast between the frontmost window (dark) and background windows (light). Safari 4 uses the wrong colors both for active and inactive windows. The following table compares the top left corner of active (foreground) and inactive (background) windows in Safari 3 and 4 on Mac OS X 10.5.6. Safari 3 uses the system-standard colors for both states. Safari 4 is shown both with the leftmost tab active and inactive.3 The toolbar/title bar in a standard, frontmost Leopard window is a gray gradient that goes from 77% brightness at the top to 59% at the bottom; for background windows, the standard gradient goes from 91–81%. (100% would be pure white, 0% pure black.) Safari 4 displays four different title bar states, for active and inactive tabs in both foreground and background windows. In none of these four states does Safari 4 use the standard gradient colors. Safari 3 Safari 4, Active Tab Safari 4, Inactive Tab Foreground 77–59 88–69 73–61 Background 91–81 95–86 83–77 In the above table, colors are expressed as a range of two grayscale percentages, the first from the top of the window, the second from the bottom of the gradient. The usability advantage to Leopard’s consistent system-wide window colors is that it is easy to pick out the current frontmost window at a glance, regardless of the contents of the window, by glancing the at the title/toolbar areas at the top of your screen. All background windows are very light; the frontmost window is dark, so to find the active window just look for the dark one. Safari 4’s non-standard colors ruin this simplicity, particularly in two cases: A foreground window containing a single tab. A background window containing several tabs, and where the rightmost tab is the active one. The problem with #1 is that in an active Safari 4 window with just one tab, the color is nearly as bright as that of a standard background window, especially at the very top of the window — there should be a 14 percent difference in brightness but the difference is only 3 percent. The problem with #2 is that inactive tabs in a background Safari 4 window are nearly as dark as the active tab in the frontmost Safari 4 window — there’s only a 6 percent difference in brightness at the top of the window. In both cases there simply isn’t enough contrast. A significant Leopard usability improvement has been ignored for no benefit whatsoever. Other Things That Are Wrong With Safari 4’s Tabs Add to the aforementioned problems: In order to fit more text in each tab, Apple is drawing Safari 4 tab titles in a different font size and weight (11px Lucida Grande Bold) than the title bar text in every other window in the entire system (13px Lucida Grande Regular). This makes the title bar area look particularly strange when a window contains just one tab. Prior to Safari 4, you could Command-click the title of a window to get a pop-up menu showing a hierarchical path listing for the current URL. This feature is now gone. I can’t say it was that big of a deal, but it seems to me Apple could bring it back when you Command-click on a tab title. The triangular grippy strip that indicates the draggable region of a tab is a poor choice. It looks almost exactly like the standard drag-to-resize indicator in the bottom right corner of a window, but serves a completely different purpose. Things that look similar should behave similarly; things that behave differently should look different. In Safari 3 (and prior), you could drag a URL from any app and drop it into the empty space at the right side of the tab bar to create a new tab in that window displaying the contents of the dropped URL. It is very tricky to do this in the Safari 4 public beta. The obvious destination for such a drop is the “+” button in the top right corner, but that doesn’t work unless you hit just the right sliver — maybe 4 or 5 pixels horizontally between the “+” button and the rightmost tab. (You can drop a URL on Safari’s Dock icon to open it in a new tab, but only if you change Safari’s preference setting regarding how to “Open links from applications”.) I assume this is a bug in the public beta, and that the entire “+” button should work as a drop target. The Good News: Tab Dragging No Longer Modal In April last year, I documented Safari 3’s two different modes for moving tabs with drag-and-drop, which I called inter-window (moving a tab from one window to another) and intra-window (rearranging the order of tabs within one window). The mode was determined by the direction in which you initially began moving a tab. The problem was that once you entered a mode, you couldn’t switch to the other without stopping and starting over. Good news: Safari 4 no longer locks you into a dragging mode. Regardless which direction you start dragging, you can change directions and drag the tab wherever you want. Even better news: the locked-in dragging modes are also gone in Safari 4 even when you diddle the defaults preferences to revert to the old-style tabs underneath the toolbar. Cinematic Experience The first time you launch it, Safari 4 opens a browser window that displays a logo and animation, replete with sound, reminiscent of the startup screen for Apple TV. I find it oddly captivating. It’s an example of the “cinematic experience” that Apple has been pushing for at recent WWDCs — the idea being that the production value and feel of Mac software should be of similar caliber to that of popular TV shows and movies. What’s interesting about this splash screen technically is that it isn’t a QuickTime or Flash movie. It’s implemented entirely using HTML 5 and JavaScript. The new Top Sites feature — the most prominent feature on Apple’s “What’s new in Safari” page — is another example. From a practical standpoint it’s a neat idea, and pretty much identical to the “new tab page” feature Google introduced in Chrome — a visual matrix of your most-visited web sites, created and updated automatically based on your browsing history. But where Chrome’s presentation is a flat rectangle of thumbnails, Safari’s is a three-dimensional fan against a black background, complete with a glossy reflective foreground. Safari uses RSS to check for updated content on the pages in your Top Sites list; when there’s a change, it marks the page with a peeled-down corner and a star. It’s nice. One thing that’s not at all obvious, however, is how you can customize the top sites list. When you enter the edit mode, you can drag to rearrange, pin a site to a specific spot in the grid, and delete a site from the list. But when you delete a site, it’s replaced by another site chosen automatically based on your history. You can customize the listing, though — when in edit mode, just drag-and-drop a URL from another Safari window to the spot where you want it in the Top Sites grid. (Nerdier tip: the list of top sites is stored in a plist file at ~/Library/Safari/TopSites.plist; you can edit it by hand when Safari isn’t running.) The other visual-effects-powered feature is the addition of Cover Flow for your browsing history. I seldom use Cover Flow mode in iTunes and never in the Finder, but for web page history, it strikes me as downright useful — perfect for finding a page when you don’t remember the name or URL, but you do remember what it looked like. Improved Location Field and Google Search Auto-Completion Both the location field (a.k.a. address field) and Google search field feature much improved auto-completion. The biggest improvement to the location field auto-completion is that it feels way faster. Previously, if I typed fast enough, I could hit return intending to engage the default suggested completion, but in fact hit return before the completion menu had even appeared, in which case Safari would take whatever few characters I’d typed and tack “.com” at the end, loading the wrong web site. The completion menu now seems to appear instantaneously. It also looks better, with a clear separation between page titles and URLs, and separate sections for matches from your history and bookmarks. In Safari 3, the completion menu only showed URLs (no titles), and there was no separation between matches from your bookmarks and history. My only gripe is that it currently shows the history section above the bookmarks section — I’d prefer it the other way around. The Google search field now populates the suggestion menu as you type with results from Google’s Suggest feature. For me at least, the suggestions are remarkably, almost spookily, good. Note, though, that it doesn’t offer suggested results, but rather offers suggested terms to search for. If you choose a suggestion from the menu, you still go to a Google search results listing, not immediately to a destination page. That’s OK with me, but it’s not going to satisfy those of you who prefer input manager hacks like Inquisitor. Minor Observations The “Save as Web Application” feature in previous Safari 4 betas (which were available only to ADC developers) is gone. It was a command in the File menu that let you turn any web page into a site-specific browser — like Fluid, but built into Safari. No idea what happened to it. I enjoy Mobile Me’s automatic bookmark syncing between my Mac and iPhone versions of Safari. But I’d like to see history syncing, too. Imagine having location field auto-completion on your Mac work for sites which you visited using your iPhone. Zoom is now page zoom, not just text zoom — when you zoom in or out, the entire page, including layout and graphics, scales. But there’s an option in the View menu, off by default, to do text zoom only. SnapBack is now only available for search results — the orange SnapBack button in the location field and manual “Mark Page for SnapBack” features from Safari 3 are gone. The only remaining SnapBack feature is the “Search Results SnapBack” command in the History menu. I never used it, and I don’t know anyone who does, so I suspect this was a good feature to cut. I’m sure some people used it, but if you never remove lesser-used features, you can’t add new features without letting the overall complexity blow up. Yes, yes, there are command-line defaults preferences you can diddle to revert the tabs (and the progress bar) to the old style, but those may not be here for long, and they certainly won’t help the millions of users who have never even heard of Terminal, let alone launched it. ↩ My thanks to Chris Liscio for the movie. ↩ These screenshots also demonstrate how in Safari 3 the toolbar buttons are vertically centered between the close/minimize/zoom buttons and the bottom of the toolbar. In Safari 4 they are not, which I find visually unpleasing. ↩
-
MacA&D goes Universal Binary, beefs up user interface
Posted by Dennis SellersExcel Software has updated MacA&D—a scaleable tool for drawing multi-level data flow diagrams, logical and physical data models and UML class diagrams—to version 3.0. The new software is a Universal Binary application for native performance on all Mac OS X computers—both PowerPC and Intel.
-
RIM names its app store 'BlackBerry App World'
What's bigger than a store, a market, or a catalog? A whole frigging world, that's what. A sign-up page to be notified when the BlackBerry App World is available -- which we've linked -- will go live at 10PM tonight.Filed under: Cellphones, HandheldsRIM names its app store 'BlackBerry App World' originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 04 Mar 2009 14:09:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments
-
Blastwave FX releases sound effects libraries on USB flash drives
Posted by Dennis SellersBlastwave FX, a HD sound effects label, has released 20 sound effects libraries on an USB flash drive. They're Mac and PC compatible.
-
First Look: VegOut, for your vegetarian dining needs
Filed under: Software, iPhone, App Store "I did not become a vegetarian for my health, I did it for the health of the chickens." Isaac Bashevis Singer I've been a vegetarian for over a decade now, and I'm very familiar with the predicament of being in a new city and not having the foggiest idea where to look for a restaurant which caters to my particular lifestyle choices. When I heard about VegOut, I was immediately hopeful that my iPhone would, once again, provide a solution to a real-life problem. I was not disappointed. VegOut is powered by happycow.net, an community aggregator for reviews and locations of vegan, vegetarian and veg-friendly restaurants. VegOut provides location awareness, touch navigation and a great-looking front end for this very useful service. It provides ratings, contact info, maps and can filter by your specific vegan/vegetarian preferences. If you're going out with a group of omnivores, or trying to please a vegan in the group but still keep the rest of the carnivores well-fed, VegOut can help. In addition to "current location" search, it can also search any location you specify. Reviews of a restaurant can be loaded from happycow.net in VegOut's internal browser, and you can easily jump from there to Mobile Safari to add your own reviews, email the page, etc.. I'm discovering new restaurants across the country, and all of my current favorite restaurants have shown up. My newest culinary crush (Soul Vegetarian East in Chicago) came up with a 5-star rating, and I found some reviews of dishes I can't wait to go back and try. VegOut is available in the App Store (iTunes link) for $4.99US. Champ Bennett, author of VegOut, has announced a 24-hour sale for TUAW readers, dropping the price to $3.99US. You can follow @VegOutApp on Twitter for updates. I don't know how many TUAW readers have sworn off the meat for one reason or another, but this is one handy application for the traveling vegetarian.TUAWFirst Look: VegOut, for your vegetarian dining needs originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Wed, 04 Mar 2009 14:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments
-
Backstage: On Alternator Whine, A Noise That Messes Up In-Car AUX Ports
A couple of weeks ago, we reviewed Griffin's Noise-Reducing Audio Cable, a special auxiliary audio cable designed to fight “alternator whine,” a high-pitched sound that appears when certain iPod or iPhone accessories are connected to the auxiliary (AUX) input ports in certain cars. Since AUX ports should deliver optimal sound quality when properly connected to Apple's devices—unlike comparatively noisy FM transmitters…
-
News: Zynga releases Scramble Live for iPhone, iPod touch
Zynga has released its Scramble Live word game for the iPhone and iPod touch. Based on what the company's Scramble game for Facebook, Scramble Live lets users build words by using connecting letters on a 4x4 or 5x5 board. The game offers both solo and play n' pass modes in addition to its Live mode, in which players can compete with friends or other Facebook, iPhone, and iPod touch users in real time over 3G or Wi-Fi. Scramble Live is…
-
Did Amazon Intentionally Cripple the Kindle iPhone App?
Ed Burnette: Kindle for iPhone is nice for people who already have a Kindle or Kindle 2 who might find themselves away from their device with a little time to kill. However, Amazon seems to have taken steps to make sure the iKindle does not cannibalize sales of their $359 money maker. If, as Amazon claims, the big-screen Kindle e-ink reading experience is so much better than reading books on a phone, then why bother crippling the phone reader? His complaints are that the Kindle iPhone app doesn’t have a search feature and doesn’t connect directly to the Kindle store, both valid complaints. But it’s possible Amazon simply hasn’t implemented them yet. (It’s also possible that Apple, not Amazon, objected to direct integration to the Kindle store.) And how sure are we that the $359 Kindle hardware is a “money maker” for Amazon? Especially given that it offers free-for-life EVDO networking, I strongly suspect it’s a loss-leader for selling books. ★
-
Gallery: Installing Mac OS X on a Dell Mini 9
I posted a photo gallery of pictures that I took while installing Mac OS X on my Dell Mini 9 netbook last night. I apologize for the craptastic resolution of the iPhone photos, it was the easiest way to liveTweet the process. More soon…
-
The Mac mini - Unboxed and Exposed
There was much excitement to be had over at macminicolo.net as they received the news that a new Mac mini was announced by Apple yesterday. Even more joy was had when they managed to get their hands on one. These lovers of all things Mac mini, describe in loving detail the packaging, exterior and interior of the tiny machine.read more
-
JBL On Stage Speaker Giveaway
JBL and iLounge are giving away ten (10) JBL On Stage 200ID Loudspeaker Docks for iPod and iPhone (retail value $150) to ten lucky winners. Please visit JBL.com for more information on features, specifications and photos. Enter now by filling out the form below. Good Luck! {exp:freeform:form form_name="jblonstage_form" form_id="freeform" return="contest/success" required="name|street1|city|state|postalcode|phone1|email" notify="giveaway@ilounge.com"…
-
E-books lost on Kindle, found on iPod Touch
When I misplaced my Kindle last year, I not only lost the device, but also any means of reading several e-books that I was in the middle of. That all changed on Wednesday. My Kindle is no closer to home, but by downloading the new Kindle app for the iPhone (...
-
Kindle books, meet iPhone readers
roundup Got an iPhone or iPod Touch? Amazon's new Kindle for iPhone app lets you use those gadgets to read electronic books.
-
iFixit dismantles new iMac
Filed under: Hardware, iMacAs usual, our friends at iFixit have taken apart the latest hardware from Apple. Inside the new 20" iMac, they found that the machine's innards live behind the display, which must first be removed (this isn't new, but a lot less convenient than the G5s with their removable rear panel).Notable is that the AU Optronics M302EW02 display isn't LED backlit, but has a CCFL backlight (four of them in fact, each run by its own high-voltage AC power). Also, the crew had to remove 22 screws before getting at the 12.7mm SATA 8x double-layer SuperDrive, which features a screw-free design. Go figure.Finally, they uncovered six temperature sensors, the largest resting above above the 2.66 GHz Core 2 Duo processor, of course.While my first inclination after receiving a brand new iMac certainly wouldn't be to take it apart, I'm glad that's just me. Thanks, iFixit![Via MacNN]TUAWiFixit dismantles new iMac originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Wed, 04 Mar 2009 13:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments
-
Beta Watch: Thunderbird 3 Email Client
Mozilla recently released Thunderbird 3 Beta 2, another stop along the road to the final release of Thunderbird 3. Thunderbird is a full-featured, open-source email client originally based on the old Mozilla suite browser's Mail module, which in turn derived from the ancient Netscape Communicator Messenger module. I've never been a particularly big Thunderbird fan, but I've recently revisited it as a possible Intel Mac-friendly replacement for my longtime email stalwart — Eudora — which is proving an unhappy camper on my new Unibody MacBook. One reason to go with Thunderbird is that it also forms the basis of the new, open-source “Eudora” version 8 (aka Penelope), which is really nothing like classic Eudora other than sharing some of the its appearance conventions. Thunderbird shares with Eudora 8 the happy facility to efficiently import settings, contacts, and email archives from Classic Eudora, a huge convenience. Thunderbird incorporates the three-pane user interface model familiar to users of OS X Mail and Outlook Express. It's fast (at least on Intel-based Macs), reasonably easy to configure, and will be intuitive to use for folks who like three-pane email clients, but less so for us Classic Eudora holdouts. It's also open source and one of the most sophisticated free email clients available. Thunderbird handles HTML mail competently, lets you keep images turned off until you want them to load, has sensible protocols for dealing with suspected spam, a decent search engine (not as slick as Classic Eudora's, alas), and allows the user to specify manual checks of individual mail accounts, which is huge for me, as I have 22 accounts configured. Less commendable are Thunderbird's clunky Address Book implementation (especially its handling of recipient groups), obtuse CC and BCC configuration, and less-than-straightforward handling of multiple accounts —- particularly SMTP server assignment. Another thing that bugs me is that you can't select all in a message and get in the address and subject line info along with the body text, which makes frequent copy-and-paste tasks take literally twice as long. All those angularities can be worked around, but they're frustrating for old Eudora hands accustomed to that program's tractable and convenient flexibility. However, I'm getting acclimatized, and finding the Thunderbird 3 Beta 2 build released last week a smooth performer, with no beta bugginess encountered so far. Notable changes in Thunderbird 3 Beta 2 include: User Experience Improvements Message Archive You can now file messages from your Inbox or other folders into the new Archive folder system. Activity Manager Now records all the interactions between Thunderbird and your email provider in one place. Performance improvements Faster Message Loading for IMAP Thunderbird will now download IMAP messages by default in the background, allowing for faster message loading, and better offline operation. This feature can be enabled on an individual folder basis or for all folders in an account. According to the developers, there are more than 340 changes in this release, many laying the groundwork for future ones. And a blog post by David Ascher says the most striking aspect is the sheer volume of bug fixes. You can check the bug fix inventory here. Ascher says the new Archive feature is borrowed from Gmail's, which relies on the program's search capability to find messages, although you can also still use the standard “file in a folder” method, and while the projected new fast global search isn't implemented yet, even the old cross-folder search mechanism has been improved. The next beta release is projected to be the last scheduled Thunderbird 3 beta and the last milestone to introduce more new features. Slated feature additions include: New global search function, leveraging tabs Cleaning up the message header area further The beginning of some theming work (prettier icons, etc.) If you're running an older system, be aware that Thunderbird 3 Beta 2 no longer supports Mac OS X versions prior to 10.4 Tiger. As is common fare for Mozilla, Thunderbird is completely free. Green your IT. Save Money. Save the Planet » Register at $295 / $495 regular » Hear Microsoft, IBM, Dell and Cisco execs at GigaOM's Green:Net.
-
FileAid for iPhone, iPod touch free for limited time
Posted by Dennis SellersFileAid for the iPhone and iPod touch is being offered for free through March 17. You can find it at the Apple App Store.
-
A First Look at Amazon's Kindle App for the iPhone
Amazon.com's new Kindle application for the Apple iPhone and iPod touch lacks key functionality, including an easy way to buy electronic books.
-
Amazon's Free 'Kindle for iPhone' Now Available
There is often a battle on the bus I take to work of which commuters have the coolest gear. While some smugly surf the net with their iPhones, others are proving their intellectual superiority by whipping out their Kindle. Well, chalk one up for the iPhone/iPod touch users, because they just got their "Kindle" for free.read more
-
Webware Radar: Preview PDFs in your browser without downloading them
Also: Acquia launches new search tool for the Drupal 6 content management system; Zynga unveils Scramble Live for the iPhone, iPod Touch; and Conveneer raises $4.5 million.
-
Cermster introduces Relations Manager for iPhone
Posted by Dennis SellersCermster has released Relations Manager, a social CRM business app for the iPhone. It's available at the Apple App Store for US$4.99.
-
Why people won't pay for e-books on the iPhone
Amazon recently launched a Kindle Reader application that allows you to read e-books on your iPhone or iPod Touch. Here's why Amazon won't be selling too many e-books to iPhone users.
-
Aple Dsn't Edt Typeoh
read more
-
New iPhone app designed to help prevent cancer
Posted by Dennis SellersLuca Rossi, a medical student at the University of Milan, Bicocca, is one of the developers of eat AntiCancer, an iPhone app based on scientific-tested aliments for your diet that can help you preventing cancer and other diseases.
-
Plethora of Apple software updates released (Airport and iLife)
Apple this morning released four software updates via Mac OS X’s built-in un update mechanism of the same name. Two address features in the new AirPort and Time Capsule base stations and two are targeted at Apple’s iLife ‘09 software suite: AirPort Client Update 2009-001 v.1.0 (1.8MB) - “addresses issues with roaming and network selection [...]
-
ReSizeme for Mac OS X updated to version 2.0
Posted by Dennis SellersDare to be Creative has released ReSizeMe 2.0, an update of the batch image and photo editor for Mac OS X 10.4 and 10.5. The upgrade now allows users to create drop shadows, reflections, watermarks and change image formats.
-
Windows 7 gets down to business
With Windows 7, Microsoft is trying not to make the same mistakes it did with Windows Vista. That much is clear. One of the biggest things Microsoft is trying to do different this time is be a more dependable software vendor. The company knows it lost some credibility with businesses ...
-
AroundMe updates, improves
Filed under: Software, Internet ToolsAroundMe [App Store link] has always been a must have app for my iPhone. Now it has been updated to make it even better. Since it's free, having it on your phone is a no-brainer.In this latest edition you can chose a category of places, e.g., restaurants, hospitals, supermarkets and so on. You then get the usual list of destinations closest to you, along with a web site if one exists, and a phone number.If you click on the map button, you'll get a split screen with a map showing the closest 4 destinations, along with your current location. In the lower half of the screen, you get the usual list of the closest locations. This new feature is really helpful in visualizing where your destinations are, as the closest might not always be the most desirable. The 'nearby' function allows you to link to Wikipedia entries for things around you like museums or historical sites.AroundMe runs on the iPhone and iPod touch, and requires iPhone software version 2.2 or greater. It supports English, French, German, Dutch, Italian, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish and Swedish.There are other apps that have similar functions, but I keep coming back to AroundMe because it is fast, is usually very up to date via Google info, and is easy to use. Gallery: AroundMe Screen shotsTUAWAroundMe updates, improves originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Wed, 04 Mar 2009 12:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments
-
Regarding Kindle for iPhone
Glenn Fleishman: Overnight, 240,000 books are suddenly available for the iPhone through a free application’s conduit. This might also signal that Apple has no plans to enter the electronic book reader market — otherwise, why allow Amazon to set up a beachhead? And it also strongly suggests that Amazon is more interested in the business of selling the blades, not the razors. ★
-
Instructional soccer app released for iPhone, iPod touch
Posted by Dennis SellersWhagaa Software, publisher and developer of instructional apps for mobile devices and the developer of the iMIP (Interactive Mobile Instructional Platform), has released the GoLearn Soccer for Kids app for the iPhone and iPod touch.
-
iMac (early 2009) unboxing and hands-on
Just like the new Mac mini, the new iMac is the externally the same apart from the terribly sad swap of FireWire 400 for an additional USB port and the addition of mini DisplayPort, but inside things have been updated all around. We're busy putting this 2.93GHz bad boy to the test as we speak, but in the meantime check out the unboxing below -- and let us know if you find the tiny new keyboard super-cute or super-ridiculous, we're on the fence.Gallery: iMac (Early 2009) unboxing and hands-onFiled under: DesktopsiMac (early 2009) unboxing and hands-on originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 04 Mar 2009 11:40:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.Permalink | Email this | Comments
-
PAXitis 2.0 released for iPhone, iPod touch
Posted by Dennis SellersAustin-Soft has released PAXitis 2.0 for the iPhone and iPod touch. PAXitis allows you to keep track of yours and your competitor's times. Version 2.0 adds the ability to specify all aspects of class indexes, and even allows you to add your own.
-
Ask TUAW: Finder annoyances, backing up a MacBook, recovering data from an iPod on Windows and more
Filed under: Features, Troubleshooting, Ask TUAWThis week in Ask TUAW we've got questions about installing Boot Camp, using 1Password data on Windows, backing up a MacBook Pro, extracting data from an iPod touch and more. As always, your suggestions are welcome. Questions for next week should be left in the comments. When asking a question please include which machine you're running and which version of Mac OS X (we'll assume you're running Leopard on an Intel Mac if you don't specify). And now, on to the questions!Continue reading Ask TUAW: Finder annoyances, backing up a MacBook, recovering data from an iPod on Windows and moreTUAWAsk TUAW: Finder annoyances, backing up a MacBook, recovering data from an iPod on Windows and more originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Wed, 04 Mar 2009 11:15:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments
-
Kindle Branches Off Into Apple's App Store
You may not have the latest $359 Kindle electronic book reader from Amazon.com, but if you own an iPhone or iPod touch, a new application will let you access much of the same content on your Apple device. In a bid to increase its slice of the e-book market, the Seattle-based online retailer rolled out a free program Wednesday that brings several of the Kindle's functions to the iPod and iPhone's smaller screen. The program, which can be downloaded from Apple's online application store, lets iPhone and iPod touch users read the same electronic books that Kindle owners can buy on Amazon.com.
-
Amazon Launches Kindle Application for the iPhone
By Greg Kumparak
-
Kindle opening could cripple iPhone competitors
Amazon.com's decision to launch an iPhone application for e-books is a one-way street that should drive more Kindle devices and e-books purchased, not fewer.
-
Watchmen Poised to Bring MMO Action to the iPhone
First it was a critically-acclaimed comic by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons that took a darker and more sinister look at superheroes than had ever been taken before, then it was a movie locked in a nasty dispute over distribution rights between Warner and Fox, and now it's going to be what one could argue will be the first full-featured MMO for the iPhone and iPod touch. According to G4tv.com, the game will use Amazon's web services to create a persistent universe for Watchmen players to occupy and interact with. Game developer Last Legion used their patent-pending “cloudMMO” tech in combination with Amazon's existing web services to set up the game's backend. MMOs on the iPhone to date haven't yet had the kind of persistent universe the upcoming game, dubbed “Watchmen: Justice is Coming,” boasts. Players will be able to team up and fight each other and NPCs, albeit not exactly in real-time. While the game doesn't use the kind of asynchronous combat found in Aurora Feint, combat will be turn-based, like traditional console RPG series Final Fantasy (up until recently). It's not clear how this will work with a game that essentially looks like a brawler, and is meant to be played together with other players, but we won't have to wait long to find out how the battle system is implemented. Watchmen: Justice is Coming will take place before the events depicted in the comic (and movie), during the 1970s. Players will be able to create their own in-game avatar, though how customizable the character actually is remains to be seen. The game spans five large areas, and future content updates are planned. No word from either G4 or the game's official blog on a specific release date, although Gizmodo seems to be betting on March 6, which is the movie's release date. I'm not holding out much hope on gaming quality, as this is probably more promotion and less motivated by a desire to deliver a solid gaming experience, but at the very least it should suggest new ways in which the iPhone can be used as a gaming platform. Green your IT. Save Money. Save the Planet » Register at $295 / $495 regular » Hear Microsoft, IBM, Dell and Cisco execs at GigaOM's Green:Net.
-
app4mac releases SecretBox 1.0 for Mac OS X
Posted by Dennis Sellersapp4mac has released SecretBox 1.0, a new Mac OS X app that allows you to keep your secrets in a safe place. Based on SecretBook source code purchased from BookShelfApps, SecretBox features template management and more import possibilities. A version for the iPhone is coming soon.
-
Review: Amazon Kindle for iPhone
Conceptually, and given the recent high-profile launch of its second-generation Kindle hardware, this is only a little short of stunning. It suggests that Amazon is more concerned with selling books and popularizing the proprietary Kindle eBook format than selling its own hardware—at least for now. And it makes more sense when you consider that Amazon is one of the leading sellers of iPods, as well; whether you're using an iPod touch,…
-
Toy Bot Diaries Giving Away $10,000, Cutting Prices
Lately people have been talking about how short the attention span is of the average iPhone app purchaser. Having just gone through one of my regular app purges myself, and reduced my iPhone from six to two pages of apps (including those included by default), I'm somewhat familiar with the phenomenon. IUGO, makers of Toy Bot Diaries, wants you to keep playing, though, and they're willing to part with $10,000 to prove it. IUGO is giving away the tidy sum as part of a promotion for the Toy Bot Diaries trilogy, which has received a lot of critical praise for being a solid platformer that makes good use of the iPhone and iPod Touch's unique control scheme. I have to admit, I've only played the free version, and I wasn't sufficiently hooked to actually make a purchase. That said, lots of others have, and my taste tends to run more traditional when it comes to gaming in general. In order to enter the contest, you have to buy all three Toy Bot Diaries titles, and therein lies the catch. The good news? For a limited time, each game costs only $0.99, whereas they would usually run you $3.99 a piece, so you are getting better than a 3-for-1 deal. Other prizes besides the ten grand include 10 second-place prizes of $100 iTunes gift cards, and one third-place prize of a lifetime subscription to IUGO games, to include anything they release in the future and all updates. I'm pleased to see a company making a really complete effort to promote their product beyond just cutting prices when sales start to stagnate. Contests and giveaways are something the App Store has generally been lacking before now, and this should help separate some of the wheat from the chaff, drawing attention towards quality apps and hopefully away from the dime-a-dozen fart and gun noise apps. Plus it means more deals and free stuff for us, the consumer, which is never bad. Green your IT. Save Money. Save the Planet » Register at $295 / $495 regular » Hear Microsoft, IBM, Dell and Cisco execs at GigaOM's Green:Net.
-
Dmailer releases Mac compatible backup software
Posted by Dennis SellersDmailer, a synchronization and backup software manufacturer, has introduced Dmailer Backup V.2, a Mac and Windows compatible backup software product. It automatically backs up a user's data and allows for “one-touch” restore to any computer, even offering cross-platform compatibility.
-
10.5: Add keyboard shortcuts to Services menu items
Times have changed since this hint was published nearly six years ago. With the release of OS X 10.5, it became possible to use the Keyboard Shortcuts tab of the Keyboard & Mouse System Preferences panel to create custom shortcuts for items in the Services menu. Also notable since that hint was published is the fact that keyboard shortcuts for Services no longer require the use of Command and Shift. In fact, neither of those modifier keys are required, so you can use any combination of Shift, Command, Control, and Option that you prefer.Since I'm a frequent user of keyboard shortcuts, and always found the Services menu a bit cumbersome with the mouse (especially with its numerous submenus), this feature adds functionality for me. Notable shortcuts I've already become acclimated to using include one ...
-
Reduce CPU usage while watching Flash movies
If, like me, you hate it when your MacBook's fans start to whine while watching YouTube, you should skip Safari (even 4.0 Beta) and try OmniWeb (now a free product) or Camino instead. A comparison of the Activity Monitor results, using the same video in each browser, showed these figures:Safari 4.0 Beta Safari 50% Window Server 12%OmniWeb 5.9 OmniWeb 36% Window Server 5%Camino 1.6 Camino 33% Window Server 5%Here are some screen grabs showing each browser's performance. Further remarkable is the fact that Camino split the workload across the cores nearly evenly. I tested on a Macbook 1.83GHz Core 2 Duo with 2GB of RAM running OS X 10.4.11.[robg adds: I did a quick test using my 2.66GHz Quad Core Mac Pro (running 10.5.6) and an HD-quality video on YouTube. I also added Fire...
-
Install a workable Google Gears for Safari 4 Beta
I have found that it can be really annoying trying to get Google Gears to work with Safari. I was able, eventually, to get Google Gears version 0.5.15.0 to work nicely in Safari 4 beta. The install and update process, however, is somewhat of a mess. I had Gears installed with Safari 3, and found that I had to manually remove it first by running this command in Terminal:/Library/Internet Plug-Ins/Gears.plugin/Contents/Resources/uninstall.commandAfter uninstalling, then you can go back to the install page and re-install the latest version for Safari 4 Beta. Now enjoy offline Gmail, Gcal, and Google Reader in Safari 4 Beta. I don't know if this version works in Safari 3 though ... does anybody else know? Please chime in below.
-
Who Else Benefits from the Recently Announced Intel-Taiwan Semi Partnership?
Intel (INTC) and Taiwan Semiconductor (TSM) announced an agreement this week where TSMC would gain the rights to use Intel Atom processors as part of custom "system-on-a-chip" devices. These devices would be customized by TSMC according to individual customers requirements. The expectation is that the chips would be used in everything from netbooks to handheld gadgets. This is a good deal for both companies. TSMC has a new solution to offer its customers and Intel will more easily be able to get its processors in new devices such as smartphones.This seems to be an extension of Intel's strategy of moving into new markets. The company has been trying to push into "mobile Internet devices" or MIDs. These MIDs are intended to be based on the Atom chip and Intel is working on a smaller, lower-powered version tailored to use in cellphones, smartphones, automotive systems and other yet to be determined devices.
-
Apple Mac mini (GeForce 9400M) unboxing and hands-on
Sure, it may not look too different on the outside (save for that Mini DisplayPort jack and copious USB 2.0 slots), but the Mac mini is all... newish. Two variations of the tiny desktop just hit the doorstep here, and we're going to be putting them into a few use cases to see how much they sweat, but until that goes down, check out the unboxing and hands-on pics below!Gallery: Apple Mac mini (GeForce 9400M) unboxing and hands-onFiled under: DesktopsApple Mac mini (GeForce 9400M) unboxing and hands-on originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 04 Mar 2009 10:17:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.Permalink | Email this | Comments
-
Amazon releases Kindle for iPhone, iPod touch
Posted by Dennis SellersAmazon.com has released Kindle for the iPhone and iPod touch. It's available for free at the Apple App Store.
-
News: China Unicom, China Mobile continue iPhone talks
Chang Xiaobing, chairman of China Unicom, has confirmed that the company is in talks with Apple to bring the iPhone to China. “We are in talks with many handset suppliers, including Apple,” Chang said, adding, “3G users will account for 20 percent of all mobile phone users in China in the next three years.” A previous report from February cited an anonymous Unicom manager as stating that the companies were in discussions over…
-
NVIDIA gets further up Intel's chuff with pledge to develop an x86 CPU
Hoo boy, we haven't seen a corporate case of Hatfield vs. McCoy like NVIDIA vs. Intel since, well, last month's little Apple vs. Palm tiff. While these two makers of all things silicon have rarely been on the best of terms, things have been rather testy lately with Intel slamming NVIDIA's Ion platform, complaints to which the company summarily dismissed. But, the GPU maker with big aspirations apparently wasn't done there, continuing the rebuttal by pledging to attack the core of Intel's business: the x86 processor. This verbal salvo was fired by Michael Hara, NVIDIA's VP in charge of investor and public relations, who indicated the company would start making CPUs for integrated devices like MIDs and netbooks sometime in the next two to three years. We can't say as we blame NVIDIA for wanting a piece of Intel's delectable Atom pie, but given how long we've been hearing rumors of an NVIDIA x86 CPU, we'll believe it when we see it. Maybe these two should just go ahead and set up the PR cage match already?[Thanks, Alex]Filed under: Misc. Gadgets, LaptopsNVIDIA gets further up Intel's chuff with pledge to develop an x86 CPU originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 04 Mar 2009 10:04:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments
-
Apple updates iLife Support, iPhoto
Posted by Dennis SellersApple has released iLife Support 9.0.1 and iPhoto Update 8.0.1. You can obtain 'em via the Software Updates component of the Mac OS X Systems Preferences app. 
iLife Support 9.0.1 improves overall stability and addresses a number of other minor issues. According to Apple, the 52.3MD download is recommended for...
-
Research group: Apple, Cisco set to challenge digital home market leaders
Posted by Dennis Sellers The global digital home leadership positions of Sony, Panasonic and Samsung are likely to come under significant threat from both Apple and Cisco, according to the latest report from Strategy Analytics.
-
China Unicorn in talks with Apple over iPhone
Posted by Dennis SellersChina Unicom CEO Chang Xiaobing says the company is in talks with Apple about introducing the iPhone in China, but didn't give details on progress of the talks, reports CNN Money. He made the comments during the annual meeting of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference.
-
Is the iPhone hotter than we think?
It's hard to call two incidents of some occurrence around the world a trend, but, when those incidents both involve an electrical device catching fire spontaneously, it creates a situation that's hard to ignore -- especially when that device is the iPhone. On Saturday, Italian blogger Tim Colbourne was charging his 3G handset and, after three hours, it sparked and caught fire at the base. Tim did a little investigation and found a case of a Swedish handset doing the same thing back in 2008, making us a little concerned that there could be more melted chargers out there. Apple replaced that earlier phone after something of a fight, and while we're hoping they'll be a little friendlier here, we're also hoping this gives Cupertino another bit of incentive to go ahead and switch over to micro-USB already. All the cool kids are doing it, and you don't see their cables catching fire -- usually.[Via Cult of Mac]Filed under: CellphonesIs the iPhone hotter than we think? originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 04 Mar 2009 09:29:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments
-
First Look: Amazon Kindle for iPhone
That sound you heard across the Internet late Tuesday night was every tech blogger on the planet clicking on iTunes to download the new Kindle for iPhone app. This free app lets you read any of the hundreds of thousands of books that are available in Amazon's Kindle Store. The Kindle for iPhone boasts the following features… Buy a Kindle book from your Mac, PC, or iPhone using a web browser and wirelessly transfer the books to your iPhone Read first chapters of any book for free before you buy Download the Kindle books you already own for free — they are automatically backed up on Amazon.com Adjust the text size, add bookmarks, and view the annotations you created on your Kindle device Once you launch the app, you are greeted by a setup screen that asks you to log in to your Amazon account. Once you tap in your username/email and password, you are met by an empty bookshelf just begging you to buy some books from the Kindle Store. You can't buy books directly from the app, but you can buy books on Amazon's site by using a web browser on your Mac or PC, or even on the iPhone. The online store has not been optimized for the iPhone like some other sections of Amazon.com, but using pinch and zoom, you can navigate around the page reasonably well. You will probably have a better experience on a full desktop browser, but I am hoping for a future iPhone web app to make the browsing and purchasing of e-books a little better on the iPhone itself. It appears that you can only read e-books on the iPhone, at least for now. When browsing newspapers, blogs, and magazines, the Amazon web site says that you can sync to your Kindle or iPhone, but it only actually shows your registered iPhone when browsing books. I hope this will get fixed eventually so that all Kindle content will be accessible on the iPhone as well as the Kindle itself. If you have a Kindle, your books will sync to your iPhone automatically. Even better, if you have set bookmarks or made annotations, those items will sync to the iPhone app as well. I tried setting some bookmarks in a book I purchased at Amazon.com (”Coraline,” by Neil Gaiman, if you were curious) which worked great. I could not find a way to delete the bookmark though — I guess we should expect 1.0.1 sometime later this week. To remove content from the iPhone app, you simply use the slide-to-delete gesture like you do in the mail or SMS apps. The reading experience is pretty smooth. Coraline opened to the first page of the book when first launched and I could swipe forward to keep reading, swipe back to get into the table of contents, or use the controls by tapping on the screen. Available controls include a slider to jump directly to any page in the book and buttons to add a new bookmark, view existing bookmarks, change the font size, and retrieve the furthest read page (from any device that Amazon knows about — Kindle or iPhone). The app is responsive and quick, and swiping pages is natural enough where I did not feel the app was getting in the way of the book. I did notice the narrow width though. As a fast reader, I really wanted to be able to scan longer lines at once. Turning the iPhone horizontal does not change the view, unfortunately — it is stuck in vertical mode, which does look more like a book (or a Kindle) but might make for slower reading for some. Now that I've had a chance to read a chapter of a book on my iPhone, I am definitely intrigued by the whole concept, even if I am not sure that I am sold on the Kindle app for the iPhone. Purchasing books is quick and easy, just like iTunes for books. Reading is nice but a little cramped on the iPhone. Honestly, I found myself wishing I had a bigger screen, maybe something just like a Kindle 2 device — which is probably exactly what Amazon wanted me to feel. Green your IT. Save Money. Save the Planet » Register at $295 / $495 regular » Hear Microsoft, IBM, Dell and Cisco execs at GigaOM's Green:Net.
-
Mac mini unboxing and dissection
Filed under: Cult of Mac, Mac mini The guys at Macminicolo.net have already gotten their hands on a new Mac mini, and they offer not only the obligatory unboxing, but a dis-assembly as well. As before it seems you can take the mini apart with a putty knife. A few parts have been moved around or re-oriented, and there are now three antennas as well as a SATA optical drive (i.e. SuperDrive).Now that they've got a look at the guts they promise to start benchmarking the new minis in server performance. Needless to say, they're optimistic that the new machines will make even better servers than the last model.Thanks Brian![via 9to5Mac]TUAWMac mini unboxing and dissection originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Wed, 04 Mar 2009 08:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments
-
Cramer's Lightning Round - Aetna, Sorry I Met Ya' (3/3/09)
Stocks discussed on the lightning round session of Jim Cramer's Mad Money TV Program, Tuesday March 3. Bullish Calls:
-
Five Predictions for This Market
Things move faster. They just do. If you doubt it, consider the media you are digesting now. It didn't exist really five years ago. You'd have to wait for it in a monthly periodical ten years ago… but likely you would not have seen this article, or the hundreds beside it, on a site such as Seeking Alpha. You can read my post on a “Return to the 1970s” here. In the one week since that, the Dow has fallen from 7350 to 6726, a decline of -8.5%. One week is all it took for the Dow to hit my (self-defined) opportunity range of 6500 to 6800.
-
MSI teases Winki, the internet device without an operating system -- that runs Linux
Okay, see if you can wrap your head around this one: MSI has announced a new device designed to simplify peoples' internet experiences by cutting out all the extraneous stuff, presenting a clean, decidedly OS X-like interface to commonly used apps. It's the same sort of skin we've seen applied many a Linux-powered device before, but MSI has taken the unusual decision to call this a "new internet interactive device without an operating system." We're not sure if that's supposed to be a subtle dig to the Linux community or just marketing misinformation, but, regardless, the device (which MSI has yet to reveal) will ship with a number of web-related tools like Firefox for browsing, Pidgin and Skype for chatting, and other apps for browsing media and whatnot. No word on whether users will be able to install their own apps, and if so what happens when they run out of room on that not-a-dock, but we are certain of one thing: this is clearly the cutest name for a non-OS device of all time. [Via I4U News]Filed under: DesktopsMSI teases Winki, the internet device without an operating system -- that runs Linux originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 04 Mar 2009 07:48:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments
-
News: Amazon launches Kindle app for iPhone, iPod touch
Amazon has released Kindle for iPhone, a new application that lets iPhone and iPod touch users read Kindle books directly on their devices. Kindle books may be purchased from a Mac, PC, or the iPhone using a browser and wirelessly transferred to the iPhone or iPod touch, and users may also download Kindle books they already own for free, adjust the text size, add bookmarks, and view annotations created on the Kindle. In addition, the app includes…
-
News: Photo of the Week: iPod touch in Vermont
This week’s featured photo is from our iPods Around the World gallery, and shows an iPod touch gazing out the window at Mount Mansfield near Underhill, Vermont. To share your photos and to be considered for our Photo of the Week, you simply need to submit your own photo to one of our galleries. So get out there, take some pictures with your iPod or iPhone, and maybe your submission will be our next Photo of the Week! ...
-
Comparing Kindle 2 to the Kindle iPhone app
As an owner of both a Kindle 2 and an iPhone 3G, CNET's Nicole Lee sets out to compare and contrast the pros and cons of Amazon's e-book reader and its application for Apple handsets.
-
50 Things Every Mac Geek Should Know
read more
-
Apple's Debut of New Mac Models Light on Fanfare
Most of the hubbub out of Apple the past few days has focused on the company's refreshing of its desktop Mac line of personal computers. However, fans of Apple notebooks also got some good news -- the company injected the 15-inch and 17-inch MacBook Pro with faster processing speed, more memory and longer battery life. Previous iterations of the 15-inch MacBook Pro were equipped with a 2.53 gigahertz Core 2 Duo processor with an optional bump to 2.8 gigahertz.
-
Office 14 crawls toward beta
Just because Office 14 won't be fully released until next year doesn't mean consumers will have to wait that long to try out the products. In an interview this week Senior Vice President Chris Capossela said that Microsoft will offer more details on the beta "relatively soon," noting ...
-
Xandros announces Presto! instant-on Linux distro
We've always had a thing for instant-on OS environments like SplashTop, and now Xandros is looking to bring that concept to every laptop with Presto!, a new Linux distro that's said to boot in "seconds." The idea isn't so much to replace Windows as it is to supplement it -- you select between Windows and Presto at boot, you'll still have access to all your files, and you can even uninstall Presto from Add / Remove programs. Not a bad way to get your Linux feet wet, and Presto seems like it's pretty functional as well: Xandros already powers the Linux Eee PCs, and it sounds like Presto will run decently on similarly low-powered / older hardware. The stock install comes with Firefox, Skype, a media player and office suite, but Xandros is working on an app store, so you should have lots of other options soon. Sounds promising -- we'll see how it goes when the beta's released on March 16.[Via GadgetMix]Filed under: Desktops, LaptopsXandros announces Presto! instant-on Linux distro originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 04 Mar 2009 06:56:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments
-
Mac OS Ken: 03.04.2009
Apple Updates iMac Line / Apple Updates the Mac mini Line / Apple Updates Mac Pro Line / Apple Hypes Eco-Friendliness of New Computers / Apple Bumps Standard Speed on 15â MacBook Pro / Apple Intros New USB Keyboard Sans Numeric Keypad / Apple Updates Time Capsule and AirPort Extreme Base Station / Apple Releases New AirPort Client Update and New AirPort Utility / Seyrafi and Munster Discount the Idea of a March 24 Event / Wu Wishes New Prices Were Lower, Still Likes New Machines
-
Nothing about the revamped Mac desktop line-up tempts my wallet
Posted by Dennis SellersI guess I should thank Apple. Following yesterday's announcement regarding revs of its entire desktop line-up, there's nothing to tempt me to spend my money.
-
Staying Cool on Palm, For Now
We published our last full update on PALM (PALM) on January 12th and provided in the note a "few reasons to stay cool" in terms of buying the stock. Here is the excerpt from the full note: Pricing is yet to be announced. The end-user price is probably one of the most critical elements to the “take rate” for this phone. The speculation is that it will come in at $199 although Palm management has hinted that it could be higher. Our best guess is that in order to be successful they will have to be at the same price as a comparable iPhone or Blackberry model. Higher price points will cost Palm some critical momentum. If I were advising the company I'd say figure out a way with Sprint to get the Pre to $99 or even free with a high-end plan. Palm needs to keep the excitement going enough for people to open their wallets. A $249 or higher phone from Sprint (S) isn't going to get anyone to cross the street.
-
The Mac Night Owl: 'Apple gets greener—and it's not about money'
Posted by Dennis SellersOn today's commentary, Gene “Mac Night Owl” Steinberg says, “Apple gets greener—and it's not about money.”
-
Griffin Technology TuneBuds Mobile
The nylon-braiding-wrapped cable looks nicer and feels stronger than plastic.read more
-
Adobe extends introductory pricing for Creative Suite 4
Posted by Dennis SellersAdobe has extended its introductory pricing offer for Adobe Creative Suite 4 until April 30.
-
Intel, TSMC to collaborate on technology platform, IP infrastructure, SoC solutions
Posted by Dennis Sellers Intel and TSMC have announced a memorandum of understanding (MOU) to collaborate on addressing technology platform, intellectual property (IP) infrastructure, and System-on-Chip (SoC) solutions.