Monday, November 19, 2007

The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) (7 сообщений)

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  • PandoraJam 1.2

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    Back in August, we told you about PandoraJam - a rather great tool for recording music from Pandora's Free Internet Radio service.

    Not content with Airport Express streaming, Last.fm scrobbling and more, developers BitCartel are preparing to release a new version just in time for Thanksgiving - and gave TUAW a sneak peek in advance of tomorrow's release. So what's new?

    Apart from a few fixes to ensure Leopard compatibility, there's one neat feature that fans of the Airport Express streaming will want to get their hands on: Apple Remote support. If you've been wanting to use Pandora and hanker after the ability to control tracks from afar this might be just the thing. Of course, one of the best things about Pandora itself is that it learns from your 'thumbs up' or 'thumbs down' ratings to a track, adjusting your personalised radio station accordingly. If you're controlling PandoraJam from your Apple Remote, rating is can now be done either by tapping, or holding down, the 'Home' button, or any other AR key-press you desire. You can also 'blank out' any other applications that might respond to the Apple Remote too, for uninterrupted playback and recording.

    PandoraJam 1.2 is a free update to registered customers, and a license costs $15. Due to Pandora's licensing regulations, you'll also need to be in U.S. or U.K. to access the service.
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    Комментарии к сообщению:
    http://www.tuaw.com/2007/11/19/pandorajam-1-2/#comments



  • TUAW Talkcast #16: Talking Turkey with Dan from dealmac

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    Our lively show last night featured guest panelist Dan de Grandpre, editor in chief of dealmac.com and dealnews.com, covering some shopping strategies for Macs, iPods and iPhones; we also ranged far and wide as is our custom (who knew that $99 was the spousal horizon for what you can buy at checkout without discussing it first?) and, as Erica mentioned, sang the praises of Costco discounts. We even gave away a couple of iPhone skins on the spur of the moment -- we're nutty like that.

    You can download the 51 minute, 23 MB show right here directly, pick it up in our RSS or iTunes feeds, or stream it direct from Talkshoe. We're still sorting out the holiday schedule for next week's show but we'll definitely let you know when we do.
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  • Make My Day: Choose-Your-Adventure for iPhone

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    What is Make My Day? It's a free interactive video choose-your-adventure for iPhone. If that sounds like an awfully complex way to describe a game, well, it's hard to describe it any other way. Make My Day offers a story where you make decisions at critical points. The program works by contacting a central media server and playing segments of your story. Your choices drive which video segments you watch.

    You start off the game by waking up. Soon, the program prompts you whether to answer a phone or to open a door. From there the branch points just get more and more bizarre. It's a delightful game put together by a cadre of college buddies and offers far more entertainment than a free program ought. Your choices range from hilariously unforeseen to seriously amusing. Case in point: the bits about being struck by lightning and the "dance off" with your mugger.

    Download your copy via Installer.app. The iPhone adaptation was put together by Nate True, the same guy who brought you the fabulous "Tap Tap Revolution" and who engineered the special effects for the project. He was responsible for the "lightsaber" bit. When you see it, you'll know what I mean. Make My Day is actually the first iPhone app I know of to employ live streaming video.

    If you find yourself replaying parts over and over and want to own a copy, you can buy a DVD version from the Make My Day website for $16.

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  • 5 reasons to love Costco during the gift-giving season

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    The topic of Costco came up several times in the sidechat during last night's talkcast. Since so many good ideas were bandied about, I decided to collect a few into a post today. Here are our top reasons to love Costco for holiday gifts.

    That amazing return guarantee. Yes, Costco no longer has a 1-year return policy for televisions and higher-end electronics but they still offer great consumer protections and fabulous customer service.

    Their slightly out-of-date iPods. Costco provides a reliable resource for anyone looking to buy older-generation iPods. They clearance them out with excellent prices and good availability. Costco currently carries iPod Nanos and Videos (which still work with free video out!), as well as the newer Classics, and Touches.

    Discounted iTunes cards. You can pick up iTunes gift cards for about 10% off face price at Costco. That comes to $44.99 for a $50 iTunes Gift Card plus $0.50 for shipping and handling.

    Cheap Apple TVs. If you held off buying an Apple TV because you were waiting for good pricing, now's the time to shop. There are some amazing deep discount deals out there for Costco Apple TVs, although the pricing and availability seem to vary by store. Apple TV is no longer listed at the main Costco.com website so you'll have to call around to find whatever stock is left.

    Accessories. Costco is a great place to pick up iPod compatible alarm clocks and docks as well as speakers, headphones and so forth. If you're into such things, you can even purchase a "High School Musical" iPod dock or a "Barbie Petal Sound System" for iPod. Although we'd rather...not.

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  • iChat Matte eliminates glossy iChat bubbles

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    Here's a nice piece of freeware. Now that Aqua's shiny buttons are all but history, the glossy balloons in iChat really stand out. If you would prefer something more subtle, check out iChat Matte. It replaces those eyesores with flat, matte bubbles that are more pleasant to look at.

    Version 2.0 is compatible with Leopard (there is a Tiger version as well), accepts custom colors and includes an uninstaller. iChat Matte is free. Now, if only I could do the same thing with SMS on the iPhone....
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  • NTFS on your Mac two ways

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    PC-to-Mac switchers are sometimes surprised to discover that while Mac OS X has full support for reading, writing and formatting the older FAT32 Windows disk format, media formatted with the NTFS scheme (NT for "New Technology" a la Windows NT, FS for File System -- introduced in 1993, not so 'new' anymore...) mounts as read-only on the Mac.

    Even though there are valid technical reasons for keeping the NTFS drives read-only -- for one thing, the NTFS format is a Microsoft trade secret and must be licensed for full compatibility -- this constraint may cause challenges for cross-platform operations or Boot Camp users who choose NTFS for their drives. Without a separate FAT32 volume or a Windows-side utility like MacDrive, transferring files can be a pain.

    Enter the new release from Paragon, NTFS for Mac OS X 6.0, meant to overcome this limitation. Paragon has sold a Linux NTFS driver for some time now, but this is the first version of the tool for Mac OS X. For $29.95, you get a driver compatible with 10.4.6 and up which works on both PPC and Intel Macs (why version 6 for a new product? It's tracking the version of the Linux utility, also at v6). You can download a 10-day trial here.

    The primary selling point of Paragon's tool is speed and compatibility, when compared to the option behind door number 2: MacFUSE/ntfs-3g, the Google implementation of the FUSE library for Mac OS X paired with the open-source build of NTFS support (now stable after 12 years of development!). After a change of developers on the Mac build of ntfs-3g earlier in the year, the package is now tracking along nicely and all indications are that the combination of MacFUSE and ntfs-3g works well, albeit more slowly than would be ideal. If you have occasional need for NTFS writeability, MacFUSE might do the job; if you'll need it every day, check out Paragon's tool. If you only need to drag and drop to an NTFS volume while you're running Parallels or VMware Fusion... well, relax: both virtualization apps provide reciprocal file transfer, and Parallels will even open your disk images on the Mac side as needed, without launching the full Windows environment.
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  • Regarding the IMEI tracking brouhaha

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    Late last night, we got word that Dan over at Uneasy Silence had discovered a URL embedded into two iPhone programs. The URL, which is formatted to include your iPhone's equipment ID (IMEI), apparently contacts Apple when you use the weather and stocks programs.

    TUAW took a look at these programs and can confirm that the URL appears in both. When we tried connecting to Apple, the URLs did not return any data, further supporting Dan's concern that these were used for tracking purposes. We tried with both valid IMEI numbers and spoofed ones.

    So is Apple using this data for nefarious tracking purposes? That point remains less clear. It's possible that Apple added this URL for future use to restrict data access to those iPhones with valid AT&T accounts--your IMEI gets registered with your phone number. It's also possible that Apple uses this URL to track activity, i.e. how much use per account for internal auditing.

    One thing that is very clear, as Dan points out, is that active iPhone users have consented to data collection in the end user agreement. Beyond that, what data is collected, and how it is used remains fuzzy. Perhaps Apple will now issue a statement clarifying the situation and put user fears to rest.

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