by Joshua Topolsky, posted Mar 12th 2009 at 12:06PM
We just got the announcement, iPhone OS 3.0 is coming. Set your clocks, mark your calendars. It’s going down March 17th. Apparently, we’ll get a sneak peak at the new OS, as well as a look at a brand new version of the SDK. Exciting stuff indeed, and we’ll be there live at 10am PST (1pm EST) with the liveblog. Apple’s calling this an “advance preview of what we’re building,” so we’re not expecting anything ready to go as of the 17th, but hopefully this will allow developers to start building toward future functionality (hey, how about some push notifications?), and presumably users won’t have too many months to wait after that for the real deal.
iPhone 3.0 to Get MMS, Tethering, and Finally… Copy and Paste?
Friday March 13, 2009 10:03 AM EST; Category: iPhone
Written by Arnold Kim
Mac Rumors
News that Apple will be hosting a media event next week about iPhone 3.0 has generated a lot of speculation about what might be coming in the new release.
BoyGeniusReport claims to have heard two possible features that would certainly make many iPhone users happy. They believe that iPhone 3.0 will introduce MMS (Multimedia Messaging Service) and Tethering.
MMS would finally offer iPhone users the ability to send photos by way of SMS, and tethering would allow you to share your iPhone’s internet connection with your laptop computer. An alleged Steve Jobs email even confirmed that Apple had been working on a thethering solution, so it certainly seems feasible. BoyGeniusReport’s record, however, has been spotty, so we can’t be entirely confident of the report.
A more interesting report comes from John Gruber about his “guesses” for iPhone 3.0 from back at Macworld:
First, a new home screen app (a.k.a. SpringBoard), designed from the ground up for a system where users have a few dozen or more extra apps installed. Managing dozens of apps on the iPhone today is simply a pain in the ass. Second, maybe an answer to the question of where the background notification API is you know, the one we were told at WWDC to expect a few months ago, but which we havent heard a word about since. And maybe pretty please, Mr. Forstall, with sugar on top copy and paste.
While Gruber labels this as his “wish list”, we have good reason to believe that these features will indeed be found in the iPhone 3.0 firmware. That could mean a better app-managing SpringBoard (with categories?), a solution to “push” notifications (background tasks?), and, yes… even copy and paste.
Finally, there has been evidence in the latest version of Snow Leopard’s CoreLocation framework (which is shared by the iPhone) that Apple is building in support for magnetometers, which could suggest the use of a digital compass in future devices, much like the Android G1.
If, like me, you have some smart playlists lovingly created within iTunes.
Whilst simple to create these smart playlists can be extremely powerful and can dynamically select music tracks (or other content) depending on their pre-set criteria. By carefully selecting the criteria you can develop playlists that always have relevant and ever changing content, automatically.
Now, suppose you want to create a new Smart Playlist based on an already pre-existing smart list and then make some minor changes to it? Apart from recreating the entire playlist from scratch again is there a way to help automate this somewhat?
Yes, there is! Simply:
STEP 1
Select the playlist you want to base your new one on
Go-to the File Menu
Choose Library…
Select Export Playlist…
In the Format drop-down list choose XML Save the file to your desktop
STEP 2
Next, import the playlist:
Go-to the File Menu
Choose Library…
Select Import Playlist…
Choose the file you exported in step 1.
iTunes will import the playlist’s selection criteria, not the actual tracks, and you can then edit it to make your minor changes and then rename it appropriately.
Note: If your import result in a standard, plain track listing and not a smart playlist, ensure that in step 1 you have remembered to choose XML in the Format drop-down. Without this important step it won’t export the selection criteria.
Below are a couple of example Smart Playlists that I use to demonstrate their power, and why you may want to copy one rather than recreating it from scratch:
BBC releases iPlayer for Mac and Linux
by Mark Hattersley, Macworld UK
Note: The following article is reprinted from Macworld UK. Visit Macworld U.K.’s blog page for the latest Mac news from across the Atlantic.
The BBC has announced that a version of its iPlayer application for Mac and Linux operating systems is now available for download by Mac users in the U.K.
The BBC has worked with Adobe to develop a cross-platform version of its BBC iPlayer Desktop application; the new version of iPlayer uses Adobe Air technology to enable cross-platform support. iPlayer is the BBC’s online media player that enables viewers to watch television programmes online up to seven days after they have been broadcast.
While Mac users have been able to watch iPlayer content via the BBC iPlayer Web site, the new application enables them to download shows and store them locally on their computer.
Users looking to download the new iPlayer Desktop application can get a trial version from the Labs section of the iPlayer site. The BBC news site claims that a finished version is likely to be released in February 2009.
When iPlayer was fist launched, the BBC was heavily criticised by both the Mac and Linux communities for creating a program that only worked with Microsoft Windows XP. The Windows version of iPlayer uses Microsoft’s Digital Rights Management (DRM) to ensure that television programmes can not be watched after seven days.
Speaking to the BBC news Web site, the BBC’s head of digital media Anthony Rose defended the BBC’s adoption of DRM technology saying: “The BBC Trust said we could make content available for seven or 30 days after broadcast,” he said. “The ability to take things away after some time requires DRM.”
BBC iPlayer now uses three DRM technologies: Windows Media Player, Adobe Air and OMA for mobile devices. The BBC also enables media to be streamed (but not downloaded) to the iPhone in using Apple’s H.264 codec. Because Apple does not share its FairPlay DRM with other companies the BBC has had to use Adobe Air to enable DRM content to be downloaded to the Mac. Because the iPhone does not support Adobe Flash, a version of BBC iPlayer for iPhone would seem to be still some way away.
“We may embrace other DRMs as needed,” said Mr. Rose. The BBC news site also noted that putting the iPlayer on phones, game consoles and more computers was helping to drive the success of the application.
The BBC iPlayer service is only available to users with a IP address located within the United Kingdom.
Fri, Dec 21 2007 at 7:30AM PST • Submitted by johnga1t
As input managers are in danger in Safari 3.0 and later versions, it might be useful to know that a type-ahead search feature that emulates Firefox can be enabled in Safari using a fairly simple hack that involves native OS X tricks.
To do so, quit Safari and go to System Preferences » Keyboard & Mouse » Keyboard Shortcuts. Click the ‘+’ to add a new shortcut, select Safari as the Application, Find… as the Menu Title, and a temporary (and arbitrary) shortcut as Keyboard Shortcut. (Note that this field does not allow a simple entry, such as ‘/’, but instead requires a modifier key like Command or Option.)
Now go to ~/Library/Preferences and edit com.apple.Safari.plist. (You may be able to just double-click and open the plist in Property List Editor if you have Xcode installed.) Find the NSUserKeyEquivalents entry and edit the string entry for Find…, replacing the arbitrary shortcut you entered earlier with /. This will remove the need for a modifier key, and allow / to activate search.
Now relaunch Safari and type /; you should see the Find box appear, emulating the type-ahead search in Firefox.
Yes, you read it right. LogMeIn has released a beta version of its LogMeIn Ignition software that gives Apple iPhone and iPod touch users easy, secure access to their remote office and home computers.
With one-click from their iPhone or iPod touch, customers can connect to their computer and work as if they were sitting in front of it. LogMeIn Ignition for iPhone and iPod touch connects to desktops and laptops running LogMeIn Free, LogMeIn Pro or LogMeIn IT Reach and can be used to control Windows-based and Apple computers.
Some of the Key features are:
* One-touch access to remote access of PC/Mac
* Full keyboard, mouse, zoom and scroll control using touch screen
* Securely saves login information
* Option settings for optimizing the experience of connecting to and controlling the remote computer, including locking the remote computer’s keyboard, blanking the screen of the remote computer and screen resolution
San Diego, California – Siavash Ghamaty introduces Recycler, the first recycling-friendly iPhone application for free download. “Recycler”, by developer Siavash Ghamaty, untangles those complicated and seemingly arbitrary PEC plastic codes on the bottom of your recyclables. Acceptable plastic recycling codes vary from location to location. Recycler allows users to add their location’s codes into an attractive interface that makes a green-conscious lifestyle easy.
“I created this application to remind myself of what items I can throw into my recycling and which just don’t go,” Ghamaty says, “After using this application for a couple of weeks, I ended up memorizing the plastic codes and hope other users do the same. It’s a win for the land fills and environmentalists either way.”
When asked how this excells over use of a standard notes application to store this information, Ghamaty replied, “It’s not just a Post-It note or reminder on your fridge that triggers memory, especially for the Mac-friendly user. Everything must look as good as the iPhone, visually appeasing and an overall nice experience. I feel I nailed this on a certain level and hope the audience agrees. Mainly, I just want people to recycle more.”
The App Store features other environmentally friendly tools such as Green Meter which focuses on fuel consumption. Ghamaty’s application is the first of its kind, blending answers to everyday recycling challenges with the convenience of the iPhone.
Siavash Ghamaty is a computer programming professional and has built other applications for the app store in the games and utilities genres. He runs Ghamaty.com, the home of an Adobe Flex/ Flash and iPhone development blog, as well as support for his iPhone applications. Copyright 2008 Siavash Ghamaty. All Rights Reserved. Apple, the Apple logo, iPhone and iPod are registered trademarks of Apple Computer in the U.S. and/or other countries.
Frankfort, Kentucky – Steven Riggs is proud to announce TimeTable 1.5. TimeTable allows you to easily analyze and total the number of hours recorded in iCal.
Why not use iCal for more than just scheduling? TimeTable reads and filters iCal calendar data and then calculates the hours spent in the events. Find trends by searching the details of events and viewing the average, maximum and minimum times spent on projects. This makes it particularly suited for tracking and billing without keeping a second record outside of iCal.
Thanks to feedback from customers who helped shape this new release!
New in version 1.5:
* New exports for to do details to text and CSV.
* New expandable to do drawer.
* New set custom hours for all day events.
Bugs fixed:
* Problem with non-numeric characters in the hourly rate field causing TimeTable to crash fixed.
American Fork, Utah – MileBug LITE, a lite version of the premier iPhone mileage log application, is now available for only $2.99 (compared with $6.99 for Standard). MileBug LITE helps those driving their own vehicles for business, charity, medical, or other reasons receive their reimbursement and/or tax deduction. In the U.S., IRS business rates are up to 58.5 cents/mile. MileBug LITE for the iPhone/iPod Touch helps people track their miles and provides emailed reports for easy submission to employers, accountants, and the IRS.
What’s New?
* Option for kilometers vs miles (General Settings)
* Custom deduction rates
* Define multiple business rates (reimbursement vs. deduction)
* “Other” business category for percentage tax filers
* Foreign and other special characters supported in reports
* Notes included in reports
* SPANISH version
MileBug LITE answers the call from the many international customers. Inside the General Settings is now an option to select kilometers instead of miles. From within the Presets, users can define custom rates for business, charity, medical, and other categories. If you get one rate from your employer for reimbursement, and another rate from the IRS for your side business, you simply create two different business rates.
As an added bonus, MileBug LITE supports Spanish. Simply select Spanish as the language of your iPhone or iPod Touch in the General Settings –> International area and restart MileBug LITE. Bienvenido a MileBug!
Izatt International is an iPhone/iPod Touch application development company in American Fork, UT. Izatt develops applications internally as well as accepts outside development projects. Fingerspell is another application developed by Izatt now available on the App Store. Copyright 2008 Izatt International. All Rights Reserved. Apple, the Apple logo, iPhone and iPod are registered trademarks of Apple Computer in the U.S. and/or other countries.
(cross-posted from the Official Google Mobile Blog)
The world just got a little bit smaller. Google Earth is now available for the iPhone and iPod touch, allowing you to fly to the far reaches of the world from the palm of your hand. Since we launched Google Earth for the desktop in 2005, we’ve had over 400 million unique downloads, and people from around the world have used it to view their house, research travel destinations, learn how to make the world a better place, find local businesses, and view geo-located photos. Now, with a free download from the iTunes App Store, you can fly through the same 3D immersive world of Google Earth you’ve come to love, without having to fire up your desktop computer.
Check out this video tour to see Google Earth for iPhone in action:
Not only is having Google Earth on your iPhone convenient, but the touch interface is a very natural way to interact with the Earth. Just swipe your finger across the screen and you fly to the other side of the globe; tilt your phone and your view tilts as well. You can pinch to zoom in or out, or just double tap with one finger to zoom in and two fingers to zoom out. We also integrated the My Location feature, so with a touch of a button, you can fly to where you are in the real world on your phone. In addition, we have over eight million Panoramio photos, which are geo-located photos of places, and you can view any and all of them from your iPhone. Besides being beautiful, high-quality pictures, they’re specifically of places, so you don’t have to see some guy’s family on vacation in Thailand–you can see the beaches, the temples, all the things that give you a real sense of the place. Here is a nice shot of the Grand Palace that I found on my virtual tour of Bangkok:
Cerdanyola de Valles, Spain – Aero Quartet has released Treasured, an app for the Mac that is able to diagnose and preview corrupt movie files. Treasured is the perfect complement to the Movie Repair Service unveiled last year: Video Professionals can now check whether a corrupt file still contains the precious footage and is repairable, directly on their computer and in a few minutes.
If you decide to repair the file, Treasured sends the report to Aero Quartet, whose technicians will develop a customized solution. Treasured and Movie Repair Service are designed to work perfectly together, delivering a 90% success rate in a 48 hours turn-around time.
Aero Quartet has already developed repair techniques for a wide range of formats and codecs: DVCPro HD, HDV, Intermediate, XDCAM, ProRes422, DV, H264, MPEG4, JPEG. The list grows longer every month.
Availability:
Treasured is free and runs on Mac OS X 10.4 and higher.
Aero Quartet was founded in 2005 in Barcelona, Spain by Benoit Joossen. Our charter is to create useful software for the Macinstosh platform. “The major software companies have already filled the space with their big software suites. But you don’t fill a box only with big stones, you also need lots of pebbles. As a small developer, I want to craft some of those pebbles, indeed I want them to be gem stones !” Copyright 2005-2008 Aero Quartet. All Rights Reserved. Apple, the Apple logo, and Mac are registered trademarks of Apple Computer in the U.S. and/or other countries.
Los Angeles, USA – Macvide is proud to announce ScreenCap 1.9, their video to Flash conversion utility for Mac OS X. Developed specifically for Mac users, ScreenCap allows video recording, single screenshot or timed screenshot series capturing from your Mac. All of the most popular video and image formats are supported: iPod mp4, 3gp, QuickTime MOV, Adobe Flash SWF and FLV, jpeg, png, tiff, bmp.
ScreenCap offers an easy-to-use interface that guides the user through the capturing and recording process. The application can select capturing area in a preview window or on a whole screen. ScreenCap automatically provides ideal default settings and control many audio/video preferences. Audio capturing can record your voice during creating your video from microphone or just grab all sound of your Mac.
Feature highlights include:
* Record Video from your desctop or selected area
* Record Flash Video FLV or SWF from your Desktop or selected area
* Capture part or whole of screen by selecting capturing area
* Capture single frame screenshots
* Capture timed screenshots series
* Store result screenshots to PNG, JPEG, TIFF, BMP formats
* Save captured video to quickTime MOV, iPod mp4 or Mobile 3GP formats
* Save captured to Flash SWF and FLV Video
* Selectable area for Capturing
* Preview of selecte area
* Hotkey support
* Easy to use
Munich, Germany – Boinx Software announced today FotoMagico 2.6, an update to its award-winning photo presentation software for professional photographers. The new 2.6 version of FotoMagico Pro now also supports Adobe Lightroom 2 libraries and comes with an plug-in for Aperture, enabling photographers to select their photos from within Aperture and to export them directly to FotoMagico.
“FotoMagico always was the premier photo slideshow tool on the Mac. Professional photographers treasure its fine-granular controls for creative storytelling”, says Oliver Breidenbach, co-founder of Boinx Software. “With the new version 2.6, which is a free update for all FotoMagico 2 users, we further deepend the integration with the two leading photo workflow solutions from Adobe and Apple.”
“The Aperture Plug-in provides the missing link in my workflow”, says Derrick Story, Author of The Photoshop CS4 Companion for Photographers. “Now I can select the images for my slideshow in Aperture, and the plugin automatically creates a FotoMagico document with them. Very nice.”
Adobe Lightroom 2 Support:
In addition to iPhoto, Aperture and Lightroom 1 libraries, FotoMagico 2.6 (Pro version only) now also supports libraries of the new Adobe Lightroom 2. With the integrated iMedia Browser users can also seamlessly access GarageBand songs, iLife sound effects and media libraries from iTunes or media files from any other folder on their hard disk.
FotoMagico Plug-in for Aperture:
The new FotoMagico Plug-in for Aperture allows photographers to select the pictures in Aperture and export them to FotoMagico to create stunning animated photo presentations with transitions, titles and more. A photographer can now access his Aperture library from the iMedia Browser from within FotoMagico, or the other way around – send a selection of pictures from Aperture to FotoMagico. The FotoMagico Plug- in for Aperture is part of FotoMagico 2.6 and also available as a free download at the Boinx Website.
Availability and Pricing:
FotoMagico 2.6 is available immediately for download from the Boinx Website. A built-in assistant will guide users through the process of aquiring the proper license. The update to FotoMagico 2.6 is free of charge to current FotoMagico 2.x license owners at their current license levels. FotoMagico 2.6 Express is available for $49 (USD) and FotoMagico 2.6 Pro is available for $129 (USD) via Kagi. For all purchase options see the Web site. Commercial multi-user license discounts are available upon request.
Los Angeles, California – 24x7digital is proud to introduce PhotoCopy 1.0, their iPhoto to Flickr mirroring utility for Mac OS X Leopard. Designed specifically to help protect media assets, PhotoCopy combines iPhoto’s ease of use with the great sharing features of Flickr, the premier online photo management and sharing resource.
Select which iPhoto albums to share, and let PhotoCopy do the rest. It uploads all of the photos in the selected album(s) to Flickr and arranges them in matching sets. PhotoCopy also copies important image information from iPhoto, such as title, date, time, rating, keywords and description.
It’s absolutely free. It’s the football game as you chat, the news as you email, and your favorite soap as you pay your bills. Zattoo is also TV when you don’t have a TV – it’s the channels you want, when you want, where you want
Need to rate your iTunes music tracks? Don’t want to interrupt your current activity by switching to iTunes? You need I Love Stars
This neat little application sits on the menu bar and allows you to set the iTunes star rating of the track currently playing. You can do this either by clicking on the appropriate star or, even nicer, the application is mouse scroll-wheel aware so you can simply roll the wheel whilst hovering over the application’s display in the menu bar.
If you right-click on it you can see the current track name and album.
Oh, did I mention? It’s FREE
Also worth looking at is another, more feature-rich, free application: You Control: iTunes
If you want a quick and simple, no fuss rating tool you be hard pressed to find better than I Love Stars.
This is a tale of a crashed iPod Touch and it’s subsequent painless restore:
A few days ago my iPod Touch (16GB) crashed and went into restore / recovery mode, or perhaps I put it into restore / recovery mode accidentally. At boot-up it showed the restore / recovery screen: a USB cable being plugged into iTunes (see image on the right).
In case you don’t know:
to quit a hung application you press and hold the home button, for 5 to 10 seconds
to force a complete device restart you press and hold the lock/unlock button along with the home button for about 5 to 10 seconds
I’d been having a few problems with it, prior to the crash: it wouldn’t stay connected to my home wi-fi network and had started behaving strangely. I forced a device restart (maybe 2 or 3 times) and it then showed the ‘restore-me’ icon (as described above).
Maybe it ‘decided’ it needed a restore (as system problems were apparent) or maybe I didn’t let go of the home button – I was distracted reading a web page at the time about the upcoming Apple event ( New MacBooks look amazing BTW).
I re-connected it to iTunes which detected an iPod Touch in restore/recovery mode and offered to re-flash/reload the firmware and operating system and I accepted – the firmware and OS were loaded, verified and the iPod Touch rebooted (took about up 30 mins up until the reboot I think).
Jhangle, Pingtung, Taiwan – Ohanaware, a company specializing in photo editing software announced the immediate availability of an update to their flagship product “Funtastic Photos”. Funtastic Photos is an Easy To Use Evolutionary Photo Editor for the Macintosh platform. This update (free to existing customer) features over 63 improvements to Funtastic Photos and illustrates Ohanaware’s commitment to making Funtastic Photos one of the best Photo Editors available for the Macintosh platform.
Funtastic Photos 1.0.1 is a feature packed release that greatly improves Funtastic Photos in three key areas. The first area is Performance. Many enhancements have been made to increase Funtastic Photos’ speed for various functions. Funtastic Photos now starts up quicker, loads images quicker and effects take less time to update. These improvements make it quicker to use Funtastic Photos and accomplish more in less time.
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